


Do You Believe

by ooihcnoiwlerh



Series: Do You Believe [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Asexual Spectrum, Badass Isabella, Canon Divergence, Endgame Babitha, Eye Trauma, F/F, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Psychological Torture, Self-Loathing, Torture, Vigilantism, bisexual Ed, camp and cliches out the ass, demisexual Oswald, endgame Nygmobblepot, implied PTSD, non-canon from 3.06 onwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-08-29 21:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8505241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ooihcnoiwlerh/pseuds/ooihcnoiwlerh
Summary: Ed thinks fate brought them into each other's lives.  Oswald doesn't believe in fate.  What he does believe more and more is that Ed's always going to be significant to him.*Edited and reformatted.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a barely-interconnected string of drabbles chronicling Oswald and Edward from their first meeting and further as their relationship progresses. Also a bit of a fix-it fic based on my first idea of Isabella’s character and motivation. I’d originally planned on writing and posting it all in one piece but it got a bit too long.

  
…………………………………………

When Ed first met him, he hadn’t gotten a sense of foreboding. No part of him, no worry for his own wellbeing, had called for him to stay back.

When he first met The Penguin, patron saint of Gotham’s seedy underbelly, a man who had risen from the ashes and sought to spill any blood not his own so long as it could bring him power, Ed wanted only to see if he could make him tick, and study every reaction to store away. He wanted to be able to peel back even the first tough layers of a steel exterior and see what lay beneath. He wanted to know if he fit in more with those on the other side of the law.

In some ways Ed found himself disappointed. Yet another person refused to appreciate his wit or take mere seconds to even try and decipher a simple riddle, and if The Penguin was waiting for Officer Gordon, he certainly had more than enough time to venture a guess.

But The Penguin proved just as interesting as Ed hoped. Ed watched the small, pallid man with the irreversibly injured leg exude real menace with few words and fewer movements but he felt exhilarated, not terrified, as every sharp glance and enunciated dismissal took The Penguin from irritation to the clear message written in every line in his face:

 _You risk life and limb for every moment you waste my time_.

Ed could forgive The Penguin’s curt dismissal. He tolerated it daily from lesser men than him. He knew that eventually they would meet again, and next time The Penguin would acknowledge him as his intellectual equal.

_You feel like you’re surrounded by people who could not find their way out of a paper bag with a map and a flashlight. You’re tired of being the only person with vision. I know. I understand how that feels and live it every day. You’ll understand, though, won’t you? Next time you’ll recognize just who and what I am and what I can do._

  
..........

 

Oswald had had far more important matters at hand, far more important people to see. He’d wanted to chalk it up to paranoia when he felt someone’s sharp gaze on him, but when the lanky, bespectacled man he’d sensed watching him sidled up beside him he could ignore the invasive presence no longer.

Oswald was too annoyed, too frustrated to care or understand the other man’s—Edward Nygma, he called himself—attempts at vexing him. The only person who interested Oswald here was Jim, and he was not about to entertain anyone else. He didn’t like this man’s tightly wound energy and constant attempts at garnering his attention. Had he been armed Oswald would have flashed the butt of his pistol to send him on his way.

After Edward finally seemed to get the hint and leave was when Oswald thought about how unnerving he’d been. How he’d talked too fast, grinned too wide, watched Oswald with the sort of curiosity Oswald associated with a scientist ready to dissect a living specimen.

_“I know who you are.”_

And yet he’d continued speaking to him. He’d shown no fear or self-preservation when he knew how dangerous Oswald was. Reckless. To be so intent on being in Oswald’s presence he’d spout riddles and trivia while watching him with that unsettling smile and have the gall to act only annoyed when Oswald threatened him. This Edward person was no one as far Oswald’s plans were concerned. He was just another faceless drone at the GCPD. Oswald was here for Jim.

So he resented the other man for occupying any space in his thoughts even briefly.

He thinks about him later, and figures that the head of GCPD probably has their work cut out for them with an employee like that. Whoever Edward Nygma is, whatever job he has at the GCPD, wherever he’s come from, he’s unstable. Oswald wonders what will happen if he becomes completely unhinged.

Soon other matters take over and he doesn’t have to ponder the idea. For a while he doesn’t have to think about Edward Nygma and his riddles.

.............

  
Oswald has never been in love. He can understand it from an outside perspective, can tell when someone carries an even fledgling attraction to someone else and knows how to use their vulnerability to his advantage. He knows how it works. He knows how dangerous it can be for someone to fall in love, especially when the danger they face is him.  
He’s rarely ever felt any kind of attraction towards anyone during his life. He’s never had sex, nor felt any pressing need for it. Unheard of for a man his age. At this point in his life, though, he counts it as an advantage. No lovers to deceive or manipulate him. No one to break his heart or reject his advances. No one to make him feel inadequate, to look at his body and find it ugly as he does. It makes everyone else’s disinterest in him easier to ignore. He’s realistic about his appearance. Despite his mother’s assurances, he’s always known he isn’t much of a looker, and he’s not at any risk of having to use his lacking physical charms to get further ahead. He has plenty of other weapons in his arsenal as it is, and can at least appreciate that he has one fewer complication in his life. And at least he doesn’t have to lie to his mother when he tells her for the umpteenth time that no, he hasn’t been slumming with a woman, promiscuous or otherwise.

There are times, however, when he looks at Jim Gordon, his understated power and world-weary demeanor, and he realizes how much he could potentially risk if he can still get Jim to listen to him, understand him, for long enough.

He wants Jim’s attention, his approval. He wants to have enough power over him to sway him, make him the kind of man Oswald sees hidden amidst the depths when Jim’s torn and uncertain. _Choose my side_ , he thinks. _Choose me_. At those times he wishes he was handsome, wonders if he could turn Jim completely and convince him of his own merits if he were only more attractive. The more he sees Jim the more he wants to be an important, irreplaceable fixture in his life

But he can’t allow himself to be vulnerable. He can’t let anyone find new ways to hurt him. Part of him knows full well he will never get closer to Jim than the moment Jim spared his life.

.............

  
Sweating, sick, broken, sitting at the foot of the bed where Miss Kringle lies lifeless like a sacrifice on a mounted pillar, Ed wonders if this was what he was doomed to live. Is this will would happen to anyone who ever gets close to him? Will his internal Mr. Hyde destroy every chance he ever gets at being a decent person, kill anyone at risk of seeing that hidden part of him?

“Why?” he says aloud. His own voice sounded broken to his own ears. There are tear stains collecting on his cheeks that haven’t yet tried. He’s empty. He’s drained. He’s husk of a person

 _no,_ she _is. You just wish you were_

sitting mere feet away from a woman he’s loved to the point of obsession.

It occurs to him that she would be alive right now if he hadn’t.

No one answers.

................

  
When he was inside of her, there were no intrusive instincts, no jeering voice behind him. No thoughts except that she felt perfect, that she was perfect, that he needed her to enjoy this as much as he did. Just their racing heartbeats, his face buried against the crux of her neck as he held out as long as he could, brought his fingers from her hip to her clitoris and brought her to completion first before he finally came so hard he lost the few moments afterwards. How they went again, her astride him like a goddess as he gaped up at her in open-mouthed wonder, met her rhythm in interweaving deep and shallow strokes; how he’d have gladly gone a third, a fourth, as often as she wished. He felt completely human.

So how then could it possibly have lasted?

...............

  
Oswald doesn’t know how or why he’s alive. When his benefactor hands him a knife, he considers for a moment changing his situation and slitting his own throat.

He understands the man who took him in even less.

Ed. Nygma. Of course he remembers the name. He never forgot the Cheshire Cat smile and dangerous audacity.

At first Oswald was furious. Who the hell was this person to take him home, sedate him, strip him down and throw away his only clothes? He still feels too vulnerable to want to spend any more time around him. The man’s as unnerving as ever as he watches Oswald’s every move with gleeful building bloodlust, waiting for the slaughter Oswald doesn’t have it in him to orchestrate. And he’s certainly not going to put in the effort for Ed’s benefit. He might feel grateful if he wanted to live. As it stands he has no interest a personal demonstration. He’s going back to bed and if he never wakes up…well then. At least he won’t have to think about his circumstances anymore. Oswald ignores Ed the rookie killer and the way he wilts, hurt that his gift has gone unappreciated and trudges back to bed. He’s not the mentor the younger, arguably crazier man before him wants him to be. He’s just a broken, defeated man with nothing and no one left worth fighting for.

.................

  
When Ed looks at him, he sees a man with nothing left. A man who wants to die. And that won’t do. He needs Mr. Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin, the King of Gotham. He needs the man’s rage and bloodlust. It isn’t merely for his own benefit anymore. It’s because he can’t have someone like Mr. Penguin waste away. Not now that they can finally speak properly. Not when there’s so much they need to do. The city needs Mr. Penguin. _He_ needs Mr. Penguin.

So he tries to bribe him with one of Galavan’s lackeys, tries to cheer him up with good news, with music.

Finally, he enrages him.

It’s _beautiful_.

When Mr. Penguin spits Ed’s sentiments back at him, Ed realizes he’s finally getting somewhere. He pushes farther. He’s loved someone who couldn’t handle his darker nature, his natural, unstoppable impulses. He’s responsible for her death. And without that tether, he has no boundaries. He just needs Mr. Penguin to see this. He needs to understand the gift such loss has given him in turn.

“ _I have nothing left_ ,” Penguin tells him.

 _You have nothing left to hold you back_ , Ed thinks.

_No one will ever hurt you more than you have already been hurt. No one you love will ever be in danger again._

Just like the first time, Mr. Penguin’s anger doesn’t frighten him; it thrills him.

He sees his pupils dilate and those pale blue eyes flash with rage. All at once he’s not a tiny, broken, crippled man. He’s a supernova. The depths of Mr. Penguin’s grief, his rage, his wrath, fascinate Ed even as he brings a previously discarded knife to his jugular and presses down ever so slightly…

 _Yes_ , Ed thinks. Y _ou’re the man who transformed from a dime-a-dozen lackey to the most powerful man in the city, and now you’ve nothing left to lose. You’re the legend I’ve been looking for. You’re the man I saved. You’re the one who’s meant to teach me and bring me into your world._

“ _That is the man I see before me…a free man,_ ” he says. He knows it. If Mr. Penguin could do so much with the burden of loving someone, someone who didn’t truly understand him, someone who could so easily be taken away, Ed will gladly give up his life right now if it helps Mr. Penguin truly encompass everything he is supposed to be. His heart races in his chest as he waits for Mr. Penguin to finally understand his liberation.

Mr. Penguin’s eyes are like cobalt, like a wolf’s, feral and wounded as they search Ed’s expression for some hint of a giveaway and finds none. Those eyes never change even as he lowers the knife and allows Ed to take it from him.

A wounded animal is always dangerous. Especially when grief gives way to vengeance.

 _This was fate_ , Ed thinks. _If I was always meant to become this way I was always meant to find you. I was always meant to be a part of your life and you of mine. I saved your life. You’ll bring meaning to mine._

He can hardly wait.

  
...............

  
Later, Edward realizes Oswald answered his riddle.

He smiles.

...........

  
Months ago Oswald met an awkward and overexcited beanpole of a man he thought he’d never see again. Now he’s laughing, _laughing_ for the first time in far too long with this same person as they drink wine out of lab beakers and discuss learning points over a newly vivisected body when so recently he thought he could never enjoy anything again.

He was right in his earlier assessment: there is something off about Edward. It makes sense now. And it is a kind of crazy that suits him. Oswald can work with this. He has an ally, possibly even a friend in someone he hasn’t had to con, brainwash, bribe, or threaten. Ed hangs on to his every word and takes Oswald’s advice on the best methods of torture as sacred. There’s something achingly familiar about Ed’s need to socialize and impress him. If the first time they met wasn’t enough of an indication, it’s clear Ed’s a loner. He’s been waiting for someone like him. Someone dark. Someone a little twisted, too.

God help him, he likes the guy. When Ed goes into work, Oswald misses his company. It’s not his most dignified moment, finding excuses to call him up at work, but he finds himself doing so anyway.  Is this what friendship is like?  He has little experience to suggest otherwise.

  
................

  
Ed could never get tired of watching Mr. Penguin kill. After finally agreeing to eat and drink for the first time since Ed found him, Mr. Penguin hungers for more. Ed watches the shift, the deviousness as he somehow grows, turns from the man to the myth, the legend as Ed brings Mr. Leonard out for him.

“You still have surgical tools, I presume?” Mr. Penguin asks as he examines Mr. Leonard’s trembling hands, his fingernails, before turning to look at Ed.  
Ed’s smile feels as though it may crack open his face. “I have all you need,” he tells him.

Mr. Penguin becomes otherworldly when he has Mr. Leonard at his disposal. His voice even, perhaps cheerful, as he pulls out every one of Mr. Leonard’s fingernails on his left hand before offering Ed a turn for the right. He does this again when he shatters one of Mr. Leonard’s kneecaps; an indulgent teacher presenting Ed with a reward. Ed notices the fond appraisal Mr. Penguin gives him as Ed sets about every task with precision.

Ed’s first time drawing blood was rushed, impulsive. Now he takes in every sensory detail as he makes a notch in Mr. Leonard’s now-exposed collarbone and how the knife goes over bone versus muscle. The satisfying crack of bones snapping versus the impact of several shattering at once. He can’t hold in his breathless laughs at each new discovery.

Each time, each new way Mr. Penguin torments Mr. Leonard, how he keeps him on the edge of death but never fully lets him escape to it, how he brings him back whenever he passes out, looks like the work of an artist or surgeon. When he finally takes Mr. Leonard’s life in a show of blood like ribbons trailing down the man’s chest turning black against the fabric of his suit, he says, “And yet more mercy than I’ll show Galavan.”

When he sets down his instrument and turns to Ed with a grim smile, he looks oddly beautiful. He truly is bird-like. The small frame in Ed’s pajamas of all things

_he looks good in your clothes_

  
And even as they drown him, even with the bandages visible under the collar of his pajama top barely hold him together, bright blue eyes meeting his, he’s deceptively powerful. By all accounts, after everything that has happened to him, he should be dead. Yet here he stands, a bird of prey. A vengeful night creature.

“And now for the clean-up,” Mr. Penguin says.

Ed finds his voice as he smiles back. “That, Mr. Penguin, is a practice with which I am very much familiar.”

_Thank you thank you thank you you have so much to teach me still you are a force of nature teach me everything you can teach me everything there is to know about you_

“Thank you, friend,” Mr. Penguin says as he wipes his hands on a sanitizing towel. “That was very satisfying.”

“It was indeed,” Ed says, and manages to keep it at that. Satisfying? It was enthralling. “Thank you for the demonstration, Mr. Penguin. It was informative.”

Mr. Penguin chuckles. “You can call me Oswald, if you like.” Ed could never. Even in Ed’s pajamas, even having slept in Ed’s bed and under Ed’s medical care he requires too much majesty for that.

They clean up, they separate the remainders of the body into pieces and Ed transports the pieces to the woods where he’s kept Miss Kringle and the woodsman’s remains as Mr. Penguin sanitizes everything at the apartment.

Later they finish their food and wine. Ed tells Mr. Penguin about Miss Kringle, about how he’d killed her abusive pig of a boyfriend without thought, without meditation, because he couldn’t let that man near her ever again. How he’d kept the badge as a trophy. How when they finally started dating, after the first night they’d made love, he’d presented it to her as a gift. _Look at what I will do for you. Look at the lengths to which I’ll go to keep you saf_ e. She had been bookish and introverted like him, had a kind of beauty that evoked his boyhood sexy-librarian fetish. He talks about how he had been so starved for any attention, any sign of approval for her he’d never stopped hoping her curt dismissals and lack of interest in his fascinations could prove surmountable. How he’d put himself in line of fire to keep her safe when Jerome Valeska terrorized the GCPD. How the moments she grew to like him and reciprocate his advances were among the happiest he’d ever known. The only times normalcy, or the closest to normalcy he could ever achieve, felt rewarding.

She’d been afraid of many things, especially her ex. Ed had wanted her to know, had thought she would understand that Ed had killed Dougherty for her sake. Ed recalls the revulsion, the vitriol as she cursed him and fought like a feral animal to get away from him. How she’d threatened prison and torture at the hands of inmates like him. Ed tells Mr. Penguin how he’d trapped her—not to hurt her, _neve_ r to hurt her, but to make her listen—with one hand on her mouth and the other around her neck, never realizing how hard he’d squeezed as he told her he loved her, would never hurt her, would always protect her from any danger.

“Except yourself.”

“Yes.”

Ed doesn’t know how much she’d heard before the life slipped from her. In his desperation, he didn’t notice when her eyes went glassy. He hadn’t realized what he’d done until it was too late.

No matter how crazy it makes him sound, Ed tells Mr. Penguin about how he’d mentally been fractured after his first murder. A dark voice jeering at every attempt to pass as a normal, lawful citizen. How he couldn’t ignore, couldn’t suppress it lest it take over completely. How the voices, the loss of control, the terror that some dark corner of his mind would lash out first didn’t stop until he finally admitted the kind of creature he was. How the thrill of taking a life, of the risk of getting caught only to emerge the victor had given him almost aphrodisiacal satisfaction.

“You thought she would be okay with what you did?” Mr. Penguin asks.

Ed nods. “I killed a terrible person to keep her safe. I thought…I thought she’d recognize that it was an act of devotion.”

Mr. Penguin sighs. “My mother loved me very much, but she could never have handled knowing what I’ve done, even when it benefitted her. Few people ever could. Few people think and thirst and feel like us.”

Ed nods to himself as he downs the rest of his wine. “I know that now. Why people like us…”

“Are better off unencumbered. Yes. And the few who could understand or appreciate our actions, the few who could possibly survive being a part of our lives, are worse. Because who knows what they could do to us?”

............................

 

Oswald’s learned by now what he means to Jim Gordon. He knows the moment they’ve killed Galavan any pretense of working for him or with him will go out the window. Gordon will reclaim his innocence and Oswald will need to go into hiding. He knows the price of his revenge and the price of what could have been friendship.  Perhaps it's a shame there's a part of him who still cares for this man who thinks nothing of him.  There's a part of him who knows he will never drag Jim down with him, even if Jim isn't the friend he desperately wanted.

He _does_ have one friend left. Gordon knows Ed, will know Ed housed Oswald and kept him safe until he was healthy enough to rally up the troops against Galavan, so Gordon will come after Ed, too. Ed’s GCPD after all. He’s in danger simply for not turning Oswald in to the authorities. And Oswald simply will not let Ed come to harm. Not of his accord. Not after everything Ed’s done for him. He gives it some thought, and gets Ed’s attention for what might be the last time they ever speak.

“Gordon’s going to have questions for you,” Oswald tells him as Gordon lays unconscious on the only bed. Gordon took quite a beating—he’ll be out for another few hours. He keeps his voice even as he pulls off his jacket. He glances over at Ed, who has quit his process of making tea to turn and watch him. He looks very young—it occurs to Oswald that Ed’s probably not much over twenty-five. He wonders what Ed will accomplish in just a few years. “I already know what I’m going to say if he asks me what our relationship is, so I may as well tell you now. Just to make sure our stories match.”

He takes a deep breath. “You found me dying, begging for help, so your first instinct was to take me in and keep me alive. I convinced you…” he glances up. Ed’s holding the kettle in both hands. His knuckles are almost white. “I convinced you that I was done with killing. I told you that the moment I was healthy enough I’d leave Gotham. I never gave any indication of violent behavior. I lied to you about my plans and motivations, and made you think I was going to comply with the law. You knew nothing about my plans to kill Galavan.”

Ed looks like he wants to argue. He opens his mouth, but no words come out except a sigh before he closes his lips and nods. Finally, he adds, “Anything I can do to keep you under the radar?”

Oswald shakes his head. He wants to come back here after Galavan’s dead. He wants to listen to Ed’s singing and watch his eyes flash with excitement when Oswald recalls in explicit detail how exactly he’ll have tortured Galavan to death, but he can’t. “Don’t try to contact me.”

The way Ed looks at him makes his throat close up. It’s not one he’s seen from anyone before—at least, not directed at him. Ed looks at him like he can’t lose him.

Oswald forces himself to continue. “They’ll be here tonight. All of them. You should make yourself scarce. We’ll be out by ten, everything clean. Hit a bar, grab a late dinner.

"Something. Plausible deniability and all that.

“For now, though,” Oswald glances back at Jim as he sprawls unconscious and fully dressed on Ed’s bed, “we wait for him to wake up.”

.............................

  
Ed waits. He hopes for a call, a knock on the door, a letter, for anything Mr. Penguin can’t give him even as he knows nothing will come. He keeps his head down and tries not to think about where Mr. Penguin could be.

When they find him and drag him in like some common thug Ed is simultaneously sick and furious. How _dare_ they bring such an entity in like this? How dare they make him their scapegoat? The supposed hero of the GCPD has Galavan’s blood on his hands and he’s just going to toss Mr. Penguin of all people into the fray so he can regain his status?

_Gordon will pay for this._

He thought he’d never see Mr. Penguin look so defeated again after that first night. He wishes he could see his face when he gets close enough to his cell to talk to him. He wants to tell Mr. Penguin he’ll be alright, that he’s the most resilient survivor Ed has ever met. Their journey together can’t end like this when there’s still so much for them to do.

_“Forget me, my friend.”_

_I could never._

All Mr. Penguin asks of him is to lay lilies on his mother’s grave.

.............................

  
Ed can’t visit Mr. Penguin in Arkham: too many eyes and ears, too many suspicious people and the worry that Ed and Mr. Penguin had a greater involvement than what they had stated. He buys lilies at regular intervals and sets them at Gertrude Kapleput’s grave instead. He waits. He plans.

He’s elated when Mr. Penguin shows up at his door. His friend, his only friend, can appreciate Ed’s work. Jim must go; for all that he did to his friend, for all that he’s doing to Ed, for his ceaseless suspicions and oafish sleuthing keeping Ed from ever being able to let down his guard. Mr. Penguin will have to rebuild his empire from scratch, of course, but he’s powerful enough to do so…

But then Ed sees the feathers, sees the disheveled appearance, hears Mr. Penguin chirp on about how his friends tarred and feathered him “as a joke” that was nicer than killing him outright.

_You should have killed them. Why didn’t you kill them? They insulted you. They’re useless to you now._

Panic sets in as Mr. Penguin—no, Mr. Cobblepot now, it seems, continues talking. He claims he’s a changed man, that he’s learned that violence is not the answer. He doesn’t sound like the man Ed knew. He sounds like a youth group leader for a cult. He…

No. _No._ This isn’t _his_ Penguin. This isn’t the person with whom Ed’s been fascinated from the moment they met. This isn’t the ambitious kingpin he met. This isn’t the vengeful, rage-filled, brilliant man he got to know. This…this is something alien and unwanted. The one person he knew who understood him is gone and in his place stands a meek do-gooder. Ed wants to grab his scrawny shoulders and shake him. Wants to scream, _What did they do to you_? He wants to wreck that sweet face and bring him back.

Ed makes him leave before he loses whatever calm façade he’s managed to uphold. Once he locks the door behind him, he leans his head against the door and tries to calm his breathing.

_You’ve lost him. You should’ve gotten him out. You should’ve torn down Arkham brick by brick. Now the one living person who knows who and what you are is lost to you._

In hindsight, Ed thinks he could have deprogrammed him. Would’ve been worth a try. To tie the gentle farce of his friend to a chair and set him to rights. He could have broken and rebuilt him. For God’s sake, he conditioned his classmates back in his school days when he was bored.

 _Could have made him your little bird_. Ed shakes his head as if to jostle the thought. He’d had the Penguin at his mercy once but the idea didn’t give him this thrill. The image of skinny little Oswald Cobblepot defenseless, in need of his help, and at his mercy didn’t make him exhale hard against the door and silently will his cock not to rise. He’d seen him nearly naked after all when cleaning his wounds and dressing him and it hadn’t had this effect.

_You hadn’t wanted him then._

_I don’t want him now_. Not the person he banished to the elements. Not the person encouraging him to change his ways, as if he even could.

But he had at one point, hadn’t he? He’d felt something then, something more than an alliance. He has little experience with friendship, but he doubts friends watch their friends with the possessive glee that Ed did or hold the pajamas his friend had worn to his nose and sniffed for some trace of him after he’d gone. So soon after losing the only person he thought he’d ever love, he became attracted to someone else. It was an insult to Miss Kringle’s memory. It was a passing admiration, nothing more. He can’t develop feelings for anyone.

_Better off unencumbered_

He repeats it to himself until his breathing has settled. He has work to do. It’s too late.

Fate brought him and Oswald Cobblepot together, but never promised they’d remain together.

  
........................

  
Later, Ed dreams of capturing Oswald’s mouth with his, of stripping off that ridiculous feathered coat and cap. He still saw that odd attractiveness even in a lesser version of the man he’d admired so much, even as he threw him out to face the elements. He likes Oswald’s birdlike features and his frame that proves so much stronger than it looks. What would it be like to make Oswald truly his?

_You want to sometimes, don’t you?_

It’s not even a jeering voice anymore. No more smirking doppleganger laughing at him; it’s just him and his self-doubt. Fuck.

_You like the idea of it, don’t you? You want that angry little man to respond to you. You love thinking about it…_

of opening him up, naked and pliable, and bending him over the piano. He can hear the discordant keys slamming down as Oswald braces himself.

“ _Will my little bird sing for me_?” Ed asks, hisses into his ear before nipping at his earlobe, all the while curling his fingers inward and laughing at the responding startled moan.

Ah, yes. He does know a thing or two about anatomy, even if he lacks the experience.

_“Anything, Ed. Anything you want.”_

and the harsh gasps and whines complementing Ed’s grunts of exertion as he fucks Oswald with everything he has. He can feel the tight muscle clenching around him, can feel soft hair as Ed yanks Oswald’s head back and kisses him hard as he works him into open-mouthed, shaking, whimpering completion.

He wakes up hard as a rock and close to his own end. He gives in this time and works himself until he comes over his fist. He’d like to say that’s the end of it, but even as he goes back to sleep he cannot shake the image of leading Oswald to his bathroom, of showering with him as he cleans off every feather, washes away every dogma Arkham had instilled in him, and sharing plans of taking down Jim fucking Gordon and everyone else who has ever stood in their way.

Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have worked then and it will never work now. All that matters is the plan.


	2. Chapter 2

Oswald can’t say he’s all that surprised to hear Ed’s in Arkham. Ed is remarkably intelligent, but his egotism has eclipsed his brilliance. _Showed off again, did you_? Oswald thinks, almost amused, as he sees the headline in the paper.  It's months old, but he doubts Ed's situation has changed.  _That’s nearly gotten me killed far too often._

He’s not that surprised, but it makes him no less nervous. A brain like Ed’s doesn’t belong in Arkham; he’s certainly safer in there without Strange, but he doesn’t possess any real sense of self-preservation. Oswald, whatever one can say about him, is resilient if nothing else.

  
He also remembers the last time they spoke. He imagines he would have done the same thing in Ed’s position, and Ed was if nothing else the most cordial former ally to turn his back on him. Looking back on it now, he should’ve expected no different from the person who offered and asked for sanctuary when both were criminals. How could he have thought someone who bonded with him over murder and heal him to be healthy for vengeance to feel safe harboring him when he claimed to be lawful and peaceful?

He gets it. Any anger he has, any chance of cheerfully knocking Ed out with a two-by-four in his own apartment and brewing a cup of Earl Grey falls by the wayside. As there are few people Oswald can forgive, there are fewer he respects. He wants to talk to Edward Nygma again. He wants a civilized conversation with someone he likes. He wants to make sure Ed has a safety line to the outside world to keep from losing his mind. He wants to make sense of the increasingly twisted world around him with the most intelligent person he knows will listen. If that means ever setting foot in Arkham again, so be it. This time at least he can leave when visiting hours end.

  
Ed looks disheveled, gaunt even though from his face he doesn’t appear to have lost any noticeable weight. He looks hounded. He looks at Oswald as though waiting for the security guards blocking the door to shoot him between the eyes.  Oswald can’t bring himself to feel too guilty for letting Ed get worried over such things.

  
Their first visit the first thing Ed says to him after taking account of Oswald’s hair and suit is, “You’re back,” his voice in a deep monotone. Oswald’s proud, despite himself. Ed’s bent but not broken. Much of him has still survived Arkham.

  
As a reward Oswald tells him in as few details as he can about what changed him. Ed appreciates the _Titus Andronicus_ references, even laughs and looks at Oswald the same way he did when Oswald tutored him in the art of nail removal. He laughs as though it’s been the first time he’s done so in years. Oswald can’t help it; he laughs with him. It feels like old times, when he had a least one friend.

 

“And what happened to Grace?” Ed asks. His eyes glint and _ah_ , there it is. That look of excitement, that Cheshire smile Oswald had first hated.

 

Oswald grins before leaning in. “Her head makes a lovely corner piece for my sitting room. On the mantle would’ve overpowered the décor.”

  
Ed cackles, and for a moment everything feels right. Everything feels like how Oswald wished things had turned out; he’d tortured Galavan to death, he’d been relieved of his crimes, and he’d gone back to celebrate with Edward Nygma, forensic scientist and undercover murderer extraordinaire, with wine and Chinese food as his former lackeys came crawling back to him.

That isn’t how things turned out, though, and every awkward moment shows that. “I…” Ed stops. Oswald has never seen Ed at a loss for words before, but Arkham’s drained the frenetic, constant energy from a man who used to never shut up. “I feel I should apologize, by which I mean…I offer my condolences for your father, but I’m sorry for how I treated you when you were released.”

Oswald grins once more. No matter that it confuses Ed. “Ed, I appreciate your condolences. As for my circumstances after my release from Arkham, you were kinder to me than nearly anyone else had been. Kinder than I would have been had our situations been reversed. I’m not angry. Not anymore.”

Ed doesn’t look convinced. “And the guards…?”

  
“Are guards. They might recognize me or not. There’s nothing they can do to me anymore, but I didn’t hire them.”

  
Ed sits back. He looks no less bewildered but seems to accept Oswald’s word as truth. “Thank you.”

  
“For what?” Oswald asks, even as he can guess. He wants to hear Ed scrounge up the humility to say it in full.

  
“For your visit. And, what’s more, for your forgiveness. You’ve killed people for less than what I did.”

  
“Yes,” Oswald says evenly. “They were lesser people than you.”

  
Ed furrows his brow and flickers his gaze, eyes like a shark, over Oswald’s expression before finally he smiles again. They resume their conversation pretending the months and trials after Ed saved his life never happened.

  
……………………

 

  
Mr. Penguin comes back two weeks later. And then again two weeks after that. Ed is almost entirely certain Mr. Penguin doesn’t want revenge, and God knows he appreciates seeing him even for the scant meetings spread few and far between, but he can’t shake his disquiet.

  
He doesn’t deserve this. He should have had his throat cut the moment Mr. Penguin decided to visit an imprisoned man who’d betrayed him in a time of need. Ed’s of no use to him. He’s contained like a feral animal with no end to his sentence in sight. He has nothing to offer Mr. Penguin, yet the man keeps coming back.

  
Perhaps it’s the added discomfort of sitting across from a man who chats with him like an old friend and has no idea some of the things Ed’s thought about doing to him, and that even after rejecting him, Ed _wanted_ him. Ed hopes nothing about his demeanor could give it away, but Mr. Penguin has a gift for reading people, for seeing every cheat and every crack in a person’s exterior. Now that he’s back, so’s the master manipulator with the brilliant mind and beautiful eyes while Ed’s stuck in a cell where he has no privacy, no outlet and has learned to ignore every scream, every moan, every vulgar sound that presents its own sad symphony.

  
He holds his tongue, he lets the table serve as the best barrier he can manage, he deals with the frustration, and he waits for the other shoe to drop.

  
Mr. Penguin tells him about the monsters set loose in Gotham, lists possible locations and allies for Fish Mooney and her ilk, and provides Ed with the only tether to the outside world, and Ed clings to it with everything he can. He tells Mr. Penguin everything he knows about the monsters from what he saw in the asylum, offers his best guesses and theories from where he stands in the aftermath, and hopes it will be enough for Mr. Penguin to keep coming back.

  
And Mr. Penguin does come back. He returns after Ed seems to have run out of useful information for him and simply asks him about the state of the asylum now that all order has left. He seems concerned about Ed’s well-being when Ed has become useless to him.

  
One afternoon, while Ed’s laying in his cell, legs propped up against the wall, rereading one of the intact books he’s managed to scrounge up (an encyclopedia of American serial killers, naturally) he gets a care package. He was unaware that inmates were allowed care packages.

  
“Is this some sort of joke?” he asks the orderly giving to him. He’s a convicted murderer in a mental institution, not an eleven-year-old away at summer camp. People like him do not receive gifts. The orderly shrugs and walks off, and Ed carries the box back to the cell.

  
It’s wrapped in simple brown paper and string, and he sets it on the floor and walks a few paces around it, unsure if it could even be in his best interest to unwrap the parcel. There still are security scanners at the front, so it’s most likely not a bomb, and if it’s a severed human head it wouldn’t be his first time seeing one. Finally, Ed sighs and sits down cross-legged in front of the gift and unwraps it as carefully as he can manage.

  
Inside the box is a letter, and below that what looks like wool the dark green color of an avocado peel. He picks both up and as the cloth unfolds he stares, now open-mouthed.

  
Someone made him a sweater.

  
It’s actual cashmere, soft to the touch and most likely more expensive than anything he’s ever worn. It’s large enough that he could pull it on over his baggy uniform. He glances at the box again and notices a large tin. Inside are a mix of different cookies—chocolate chip, Madeleines, shortbread, peanut butter, snickerdoodles, and from the first smell he’s taken back to the bakeries he hasn’t seen in months, to cooking and baking in his own kitchen in the apartment he’ll never see again, to the memory of freedom. His breath catches.

He has only one friend in the world. He knows who must have sent it. Still, the gesture stumps him. He opens the envelope and reads the note penned in neat cursive. There’s a quick sketch of an umbrella at the bottom of the page.

  
_-The food and heating in Arkham leave much to be desired, if recent memory serves. I wasn’t sure what your preferences was, so I found a variety._

 

  
_\-----Oswald_

 

Ed laughs. The sound pierces the air like the pop of a balloon and he startles himself with it, he wonders what’s supposed to be so funny but he finds he can’t stop even as he covers his mouth with his hand to stifle the noise. None of this makes sense except that Mr. Penguin is a man who settles his debts, and must see this as an even score to Ed for saving his life, but Ed can’t see how that would be true. Mr. Penguin never owed him anything.

  
This kindness vexes him. It’s not something he earned, not something he deserves. He glances at the tin of cookies and understands that, when it comes to Mr. Penguin, one must always be prepared for the worst, especially with any food he sends to those who’ve hurt him. They could, hypothetically, contain arsenic.

  
For all his bewilderment and all the unanswered questions, though, Ed knows with the certainty of his own heartbeat that nothing here was poisoned or tainted. He folds the sweater and the note into the box and sets it under his cot, brings the tin with him as he sits cross-legged on top of the cot, and settles his bounty in his lap. He takes a Madeleine out and eats it as he reads. That night he pulls on the sweater before going to sleep.

  
For once in his life he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He wonders, even knowing his intellect, what makes him so special to Mr. Penguin. _Why all this? Why me?_

He’s not going to reject Mr. Penguin’s gifts; he will take whatever Mr. Penguin gives him and hoard it like a dragon atop a mountain of gold. He’ll keep everything because he never could stop thinking about him, what they’d done, what they could’ve continued, what Ed wanted, still wants from him if only he had an ounce of power.

  
…………………………

 

Oswald sees Ed dejected, sullen, hopeless, and wonders if his own presence helps him from getting worse. He wants to see Ed get out of here; he put in an appeal to look over Ed’s case, but that will take months, and Arkham has already done so much to Ed’s psyche. He hopes this is doing something for Ed; after all, Ed has done so much for him.

  
He thinks back on the moment Ed kicked him out, but every time he remembers, he then thinks about the first time he visited his mother’s grave after his release. He remembers having few assets and literally almost no money but still scrounging up a few dollars for a bouquet of star lilies before making the trek out to the cemetery.

  
He remembers going to her gravestone and seeing another, more artful bouquet laid before it; they were beginning to wilt, but still recently set there.

  
Ed had looked after her when Oswald could not.

  
He had wept openly then, knelt before his mother’s grave and braced his forehead against the cool gravestone; he hadn’t known if the tears were from grief or gratitude.

  
For every ounce of rage he’d suppressed that once he’d cracked, once he’d imploded and been left with nothing but hate, vengeance, vitriol, he couldn’t stay angry at Ed. Not when he remembered the lilies.

  
……………………………

  
Mr. Penguin comes back not long after that with another gift. Apparently most people would consider the puzzle unsolvable. However, Ed is not like most people. He’s also not made of stone, and the moment he sees a pattern emerge he cannot resist showing off. He tries his best to keep his grin subdued when he sees Mr. Penguin’s stunned smile and bask if only for a moment in that smug sense of pride. _I impress this man after everything he’s seen_.

  
The moment fades. It always does. He rejected Mr. Penguin. He hurt him, tossed him out and now, when he has nothing that could benefit him, this man, this…this powerful, vengeful, violent man has shown him nothing but kindness even after all of this, when Ed deserves none of it. He gives in. He asks why.

  
And when Mr. Penguin, who still insists Ed call him Oswald, speaks, Ed finally realizes.

  
This is what an unconditional friendship is like. This is what happens when he means enough to someone that no matter what he’s done and failed to do, they’ll still care about him and help him as best they can. Somehow Ed’s attained Mr. Penguin’s, Oswald’s friendship, his affection or the closest thing to affection Oswald knows how to give, and it’s not a matter of whether he deserves it. He has it all the same.

  
_“Sometimes a simple solution is best.”_

  
_………………………………_

 

For months Ed thinks he’ll slowly die in Arkham. Or perhaps quickly; an inmate beating him to death in a fit of rage and then doing unspeakable things to his corpse. He doesn’t expect sudden freedom.

  
He certainly doesn’t expect to celebrate his freedom in the back of a limousine while drinking champagne.

  
Oswald managed to speed up the appeal process through means about which he remains tight-lipped, so Ed imagines blackmail or threats of some kind.

  
He’s running for mayor of Gotham; he wants Ed to help him with his campaign. A small part of Ed, one he dismisses as best as he can, is slightly offended that Oswald went to the trouble of breaking Ed out just for his own benefit.

  
_Not just to set me free?_

  
Mostly, though, Ed wants in. Stranger things have happened in Gotham—recently, he might add—and as far-fetched as the idea first sounds, he mulls over the possibilities and thinks Oswald stands a shot against mayor James. Enough people demanded his campaign in the first place, after all. And Ed likes the idea of the infamous Penguin, gangster, mob boss, king of Gotham’s criminal underbelly, controlling every lawful facet of the city as well. He almost laughs at the image of Jim Gordon’s self-righteous indignation at the election results.

  
Oswald brings him to the Van Dahl manor—it isn’t a house. It’s a sprawling, gargantuan estate. Ed could get lost in here. Oswald watches him and beams as Ed stops and stares, dumbfounded, at the impossibly high ceilings and priceless paintings.

 

“Would you care for anything from the kitchen?” Oswald asks. “Food? Coffee? Cognac?”

  
It takes a moment to register what Oswald’s saying, but when he does he shakes his head. “No, thank you,” he says.

  
“Well then, I’ll show you to your suite. First, though, allow me to show you something.” Oswald nods at an attendant who takes Ed’s paper bag containing his only belongings and carries it off to parts unknown. “I imagine you miss your piano,” he starts as they head towards the east wing of the manor.

  
Of course he does. There was a piano at the asylum, but it had a third of its keys missing and was out of tune anyway. He misses music of all kind. Before Arkham he used to sing in the shower, hum while reading, drum with pencils or any similar objects to whatever song he’d happened to get stuck in his head. “It’s been a long time, yes,” he says, and Oswald _hmms_.

  
“Did you ever play guitar or violin by any chance?” he asks as they pass through a hallway of portraits.

Ed shrugs. “Never the violin, but I tried a little with the guitar when I was younger.” He adds, “I’d hoped it would make me seem cooler.” He hadn’t been terrible at it; his lack of coordination with sports never affected his dexterity with instruments, but other interests overshadowed the guitar when he realized nothing would transform him from the gangly college student with a crush on his much-cooler and heterosexual roommate to a suave playboy.

Oswald laughs. Were it anyone else, Ed would be annoyed, but the good-natured affection of Oswald’s jostling has him laughing as well.

“Well, it’s available to you if you ever want to pick it back up again,” Oswald says as he stops outside one of the doors and turns to grin at Ed before opening up.

A grand piano sits at one corner across from an entire wall of shelves containing sheet music. String instruments, a cello, a violin, a guitar, and a bass sit pristine in their stands, bows and resin beside each one. Ed loses his breath as he takes it all in.

“I play only a little piano, and poorly at that,” Oswald says as he allows Ed to get his bearings. “It seems there aren’t enough people here to enjoy all these instruments, so I thought you might like this.”

“I…” he turns to Oswald, sees his hopeful smile and remembers playing for him, singing with him. It felt like lifetimes ago; they’ve both been through so much since then, and yet here they stand once more, as if they could somehow go back. “Thank you.” Any other words escape him; Oswald keeps surprising him at every turn, how much he insists on providing for him.

Oswald ducks his head and chuckles, as if everything he’s done is of no consequence. “Would you like to play something?” he asks.

Ed glances at the piano, then back at Oswald. He would. And he knows exactly what to play.

When he plays, he watches Oswald’s face, the sad little smile as Oswald folds his arms and leans against the wall to listen. He hums to the tune, and Ed takes it as a cue to sing.

_“Nothing can warm me more…”_

He expects Oswald to join in, but the answering voice never comes, and Ed turns his head to see Oswald listen, eyes closed as he hugs his arms to his chest and gently rocks himself to the tune. Ed stops, wondering if he just made a terrible mistake. Over time he’d started to see the song as _theirs_ , but that didn’t mean it was so for Oswald.

Oswald opens his eyes. “Don’t stop on my account,” he says quickly. “It’s good to hear you play again. It’s like seeing you come back to life.”

Ed smiles at him. It feels that way. He resumes playing, never looking away from Oswald as he starts to sing again.

When he finishes, he shifts over on the bench and pats the space next to him. “You say you play a little?” he asks.

Oswald’s eyes widen and he shakes his head. “I said a little, and nowhere near as well as you. All I remember are scales, Chopsticks, and Heart and Soul.”

“Well then, let’s play those.” He wishes his motives were magnanimous, but what he wants is to be close to Oswald. He wants to close every space between them, and now that he’s free the want grows.

Oswald hesitates; Ed realizes he’s holding his breath in the seconds before Oswald limps over to him and sits down.

Oswald is competent; he misses a couple of keys, but that’s simply because he doesn’t know how to share. He sneaks a nervous glance at Ed every time, as if expecting to be chastised, and Ed likes that look on him more than he cares to admit.

He can deal with this; he can at least try to sate himself with every innocent touch. He must; Oswald’s a man of grand gestures, and if he felt something for Ed beyond the strictly platonic, he would have made it clear.

  
…………………………………

 

Ed’s suite is enormous; a full king-sized bed stands tall in the center, with paintings, bookshelves, chests of drawers all in a dark polished oak. Ed takes a gander at the walk-in closet, and takes a step back. It’s larger than his old kitchen had been, and already filled with slacks, shirts, shoes, jackets, all of which look to be in his size. He takes a cursory glance into the chest of drawers and sees underwear, undershirts, socks, sweaters, pajamas. The adjoining bathroom is fully stocked with fresh towels, toiletries, and a medicine cabinet with aspirin, antacids, and melatonin.

 _He set you up with everything you could possibly need_ , Ed thinks. He walks, dazed, in a track around the room as he looks at the content of the bookshelves, the vinyls and the record player in the corner, the expanse of forest green and Oxford blue against the dark oak. He takes several tentative steps towards the bed and sits down.

 _I may as well be living in a palace_ , he thinks. He reaches for the paper bag at the foot of the—his—bed and pulls out the sweater to set it amongst the others in the chest of drawers, reaches for his certificate but realizes that it’s missing.

He’d question this, but everything that’s happened to him so far is so surreal he resigns himself to giving the benefit of a doubt and make use of the private bathroom.

He sings their song as he showers.

  
………………………………

Oswald isn’t prepared for how handsome Ed looks in a fitted suit.

  
It’s not that he had thought Ed wasn’t attractive; Oswald’s never been blind to people’s appearances, and he’s always been aware that Ed is at the very least above average in looks. It’s more that he couldn’t have anticipated his own reaction.

  
Ed looks somehow even taller, looks powerful, and his slicked-back hair makes it far easier for Oswald to notice Ed’s high cheekbones and elegant bone structure. Oswald’s never been blind to anyone’s looks, but he’s never been affected, either, and the sensation is new and therefore terrifying. He freezes for a moment when Ed turns to look at him, his grin infectious as always, and Oswald could swear he’s lost the ability to breathe. For a second, and only a second, anyway, before he drops his gaze. He must. He isn’t used to being caught off-guard just because someone happens to look, well, _gorgeous_ , at least as far as he’s concerned.

  
“ _I had to guess on the jacket size. I hope it fits_.”

  
……………………………………………

  
Oswald has done so much for Ed, has taught him a great deal and has more to teach still. He granted Ed forgiveness, kept him sane, granted him freedom, a job, and any material good Ed could ever want. Ed’s wanted Oswald’s friendship, his loyalty, and, at times, his body.

  
Ed thinks, though, it’s when he sees their release certificates framed side by side, that he realizes he’s in love with Oswald.

  
He’s never been at a loss for words. Thoughts, intrusive and constant, serve as perpetual noise and at times he cannot stem the words as they fall from his mouth unbidden because he _can’t_ keep it all bottled up.

  
He’s sure it seems like it doesn’t take him long to recover. For him, though, he’s unnerved to not have several responses lined up immediately and pushing to get out first, to have to collect himself because everything is coming at him at once; want, fear, gratitude, need.

  
He gets it together in the eons, the seconds after seeing their names, the frames, the proof of everything they’ve endured. “ _If I didn’t know better I’d accuse you of being a sentimentalist_.”

  
_That might make two of us_.

  
He once said that people like him and Oswald shouldn’t love; that’s probably still true. Oswald once said it is worse still to love someone like themselves, and that’s likely also true. Falling in love with Oswald Cobblepot might be the most dangerous thing he’s ever done; it goes against his ideas that he could only ever love one person with the magnitude he did, that the hungering, feeling part of him still takes precedence when he’s wanted so badly to never be vulnerable again. He’s resented himself for every moment he’s thought about burying himself inside of Oswald, of taking him hard and fast, slow and deliberate, of messing his pristine mask and making him melt for him, beg for him. He’s wanted to shut off his heart, his libido, and part of him still does, but that doesn’t mean he can.

Ed suspects Oswald cannot truly cut himself off, either, but he doesn’t know, cannot tell, if Oswald may want the same things as Ed, or if he even can. Ed’s known for ten years that his sexuality, however limited in terms of experience and attempts, has existed fluidly. Oswald might not be a romantic or sexual creature at all. Over the last couple of years as a notorious figure, not once has there been so much of a rumor of him taking a lover. It could be that as much, as fervently as Oswald feels so much else, he doesn’t fall in love or lust, and what Ed feels now against his better judgment is entirely one-sided.

He imagines it might be easier that way. He imagines he’s strong enough now he can hoard every fond smile, every act of generosity, and remember that he means more to Oswald than any living person. He’s certain of it.

  
……………………………………………..

 

Ed despises Butch more than he can remember hating Dougherty, or Bullock, or Gordon, or Strange and Peabody. The man’s a puppet, and a shitty puppet at that; he’s not smart enough to have any of his own agency, he’s antagonized Oswald more often than he’s served him, and there’s nothing he can do that an equally large, stupid oaf couldn’t do better.

‘My team’, _Oswald? He and I are not of equal standing. He can break someone’s neck easier than I can but I’m smarter than he is. I understand you better than he does. I know how to truly help you_. When he looks at Butch he imagines lodging an ice pick in Butch’s nearly non-existent neck, and he imagines Butch thinks much the same when he glares back.

  
_You know he and I have something you never will_ , Ed thinks, smirks as Butch scowls and turns away, _So you’re not entirely clueless, but if you think for one second I’ll stand back and let you take what’s rightfully mine then you are sorely mistaken._

Ed’s place in this pecking order is by Oswald’s side—they are the only two true equals here.

  
He treads dangerously with Oswald because now he must. Oswald needs to know what Ed can do for him. He needs to know Butch will simply enable Oswald to make mistakes because he doesn’t understand what’s best for Oswald, doesn’t appreciate the man he serves out of need, because he doesn’t love Oswald like Ed does.

  
_I love you_ , he thinks, and the thought in its gravity alone makes his heart race. He imagines if he ever says the words aloud it will stop completely, but the thought remains, a continuous pulse as he tries to collect himself when he speaks to Oswald.

  
_I love you I’m the only person who truly loves you but I can make Gotham see the incredible, powerful force of nature that you are I can make them see what I see every time I look at you Oswald please trust me I could never hurt you even when you don’t know what’s best for you I do please let me do this for you_

  
_“Useless to one, but priceless to two…”_

  
……………………………………….

  
This isn’t the first time Oswald’s threatened Ed’s life, but it’s the first time Ed feels his spine crawl, feels downright terrified that Oswald will let Butch put a bullet between his eyes like a game animal because he thinks Ed betrayed him, Oswald’s exact words.

  
He remembers the intimacy of a switchblade against his throat, his heart hammering in his chest as Oswald stared up at him with the rage of a feral animal. He remembers clearly as if it were moments ago, saying, “ _A man with nothing he loves is a man who cannot be betrayed_.”

  
He wonders if Oswald remembers. He wonders if maybe Oswald loved him back. If he could still, if he holds on, if he waits just moments to hear the results Ed knows must come. The city sees everything that had made Ed so fascinated with The Penguin in the first place, sees the power, the intellect, the resilience and the knowledge that there is nothing he can’t handle, no solution out of his grasp.

 

Then the news breaks. The Penguin rules Gotham’s crime world, but now as Oswald Cobblepot he is the backbone of every facet of Gotham.

  
_“Useless to one, but priceless to two_ …” Oswald says, eyes wide and face flushed as he limps over to Ed.

  
_Yes_ , Ed thinks. _The people are in awe of you as much as I am. They’ll look at you and they’ll see how incredible you are. All of this, every risk, every perceived betrayal, is all for you. And you understand that now, don’t you? You know how much you mean to me._

Ed smiles at him, then realizes how close their faces are. He’d just have to lean down a couple more inches. For a moment, there’s no one else here; not Oswald’s campaign staff, not Butch and his gun, not the hum of the TV.

  
_“The people love me.”_

 

Oswald turns away, and all at once the spell is broken.

  
Perhaps it’s for the best. Thirty eye-witnesses should probably not be privy to the first time Ed cups the back of Oswald’s head and kisses him so hard his knees buckle. Still he stands and even as he recovers his smile and wonders if that moment was his imagination.

  
………………………………….

 

  
Oswald doesn’t believe in fate. He heard Ed mention it, but he’s never felt the universe is stable enough to deal hands. He does think, however, that if such a thing exists that he and Ed were meant to work together. Now that he knows this man he can’t lose him.

  
Once not long ago Oswald thought he and Jim shared something real, a bond that Oswald attempted to nurture but Jim either never saw or purposefully ignored. He thought he had a real friend for the first time in his life and for the first time in his life was far too optimistic in his expectations. Jim had been the conflicted war hero; the leading man of every inspirational film Oswald had ever seen. He’d admired his courage, had been intrigued by his complexity, and had wanted his trust and companionship. In the end, though, Jim turned out to be like almost everyone else, and that door has closed. Jim will never have his trust or kindness again.

  
As much as he’s hated Fish Mooney and still does, he knows they have a deeper connection than he ever wants to admit; she’s influenced every part of how he runs Gotham, how he views and manipulates and even kills. He sees the similarities between them: their small frames that people always underestimated in strength, the poverty-stricken upbringing, the base need and overwhelming ability to survive any circumstances, and the rise to power paved with blood. He understands now why Fish couldn’t kill him when she had the opportunity; he couldn’t do it, either. It was a twisted kind of almost-love. They destroyed each other and they made each other stronger.

  
What happened with them is nothing like this.

  
He’s never questioned the idea of having Ed as his chief-of-staff should he win the election, but he remembers the look of shock on Ed’s face, how he stepped forward as though navigating a dream, how he’d seemed dazed when he turned to look Oswald in the eye.

  
Oswald had smiled back. _Yes, this is real_ , he thought.

  
Later they drink champagne in the Van Dahl manor, most guests gone for the night after celebrations with the remaining few retired to guest rooms, and they pass the remaining bottle back and forth.

  
“I apologize for how I reacted earlier,” Oswald says. He’s not terribly drunk, but he is pleasantly buzzed, stomach tingling from the champagne’s bubbles, and claps Ed on the shoulder. “I know now I should’ve trusted you.”

  
Ed has the bottle clasped loosely between his long fingers. His grip tightens. He turns to look at Oswald; his eyes look glassy. He looks at least a little buzzed, too. “It’s alright. You’ve been given a lot of reason to not trust anyone. Not an easy habit to break.”

 

Oswald laughs. “You’re telling me. I think it’s part of the reason I lived this long. I never gave anyone a reason to trust me, either.”

  
Ed frowns and tilts his head. “I do,” he replies. He sounds almost sad, looks completely earnest. For a moment he more closely remembers the manic young rookie Oswald knew months ago than the more collected, far more jaded man he is now.

  
Oswald appreciates the words, and while he doesn’t want to hurt Ed, he can’t have endeared himself what happened earlier. “Even after today?”

  
Ed nods. The accompanying “ _Yes_ ” is hardly more than a breath, and briefly enough that Oswald wonders if it was a trick of light, Ed’s face is a scarce two inches or so away. For a second he can feel Ed’s breath against his face.

  
And then the moment passes and Ed draws back and takes a swig of champagne. “The bottle’s almost finished,” he says, and grins, tight and sudden. “And we should turn in soon. You have quite a big day ahead of you, Mr. Mayor.” He sets the bottle down, stands, and grabs his jacket as he heads up the stairs with a perfunctory, “Good night.”  
Oswald remains seated, looks at the nearly-empty bottle, and as he polishes it off wonders what prompted the sudden change in Ed’s demeanor.

  
……………………………………

  
_“You’re his guy!”_

  
_Yes, more than you will ever be, even if it’s not in every way I should be._

  
He wonders if he’s so transparent that Butch of all people can tell what Ed thinks whenever he smiles at Oswald, whenever he takes smug precedence over all other employees and takes his place as Oswald’s right hand. He wonders if Butch can see what Oswald, a far more intelligent man, cannot or will not notice. He wonders if he suspects the two of them are lovers; the mayor and his lap dog.

  
Perhaps. But soon he’ll be gone, and with no leverage to incriminate Ed.

  
_No one will stand between us anymore_ , Ed thinks as he watches Oswald’s reaction to seeing Butch’s exposed face. Oswald’s shocked and devastated, yes, but he’ll recover; what’s important is that he knows Butch is not “part of his team” and not to be trusted. He knows that Ed is his most loyal friend and ally. _I’m the one you can trust when you can’t trust anyone else._

  
………………………………….

Oswald’s mother bled to death in his arms with nothing he could do to stop the bleeding.

  
Not long after, his father died in his arms; he was poisoned, but it felt much the same. They were the only people he’d ever loved, and he couldn’t save them; instead he had to watch their final agonized moments as he held them close.

  
As he cups Ed’s face, he panics. He forgets about CPR, about calling for help, about doing anything other than scream for him and hold him close because fuck. _Fuck._ It’s happening again. He can’t let it happen. Ed can’t die.

  
_Don’t you die don’t you dare fucking die don’t you dare leave me after everything we’ve been through_

  
Ed opens his eyes. Oswald still can’t let go, still holds him close. They’re almost nose-to-nose but he needs to reassure himself that yes, this man is still here, still alive, still with him. Ed reaches out and touches Oswald’s face and smiles at him. It’s the most beautiful sight in the world.

  
_We’re close enough to kiss_.

  
Oswald finally pulls back. Ed shifts his hands from Oswald’s face to his wrists. They’re close enough to kiss, and they’re surrounded by guests and press. It feels so natural to be this close to him, but no spectator will understand that, so he lets go.

  
Ed’s alive, the Red Hoods have been exposed, and Butch will go to jail. That’s what’s important.

  
…………………..

  
He hears Oswald’s voice as though it were something distant; an echo down a long corridor; if it’s the last thing he ever hears, he imagines it could’ve been worse. Somehow he’s vaguely aware of someone touching him, not to strangle him (bit of an ironic way for him to die, considering) but to hold him close.

  
And then he’s awake. He sees Oswald’s face a scant inch away from his; he sees the faint freckles the slight crinkles around the corners of his eyes. He’s overwhelmed by Oswald’s slender hands caressing his face and his overjoyed smile when he sees Ed recover.

  
_You called me back_ , Ed thinks. _You called me back to you._ The moment feels almost dream-like in its intimacy; how many times has he wanted Oswald to touch him like this?

His hands shake as he cups Oswald’s face between them. He thinks of how easily he could kiss him right now; want runs so deep it gnaws at his bones. He leans up

 

....as Oswald starts to pull away.

  
He drops his hands to Oswald’s wrists; pretends his smile never faltered. Oswald must feel something for him, even as every moment of tension goes unaddressed. Even if he’s not usually a romantic or sexual person by nature, their relationship has reached an intimacy he can no longer claim is platonic.

  
He refuses to go to a hospital; his idea of recuperating is to stay with Oswald at the manor. His windpipe wasn’t crushed completely and the bruises will fade. He needs to address the elephant in the room.

  
He gets changed; Oswald gives him a robe that used to belong to his father; he builds a fire; he makes him tea.

  
It could be Oswald wants him back; perhaps not to the extent that Ed does, or not in quite the same way, but it will be enough. With every kind action Ed believes, hopes, more and more that this is true.

  
It’s just them now. Ed’s heart pounds as if threatening to burst from his chest cavity even as he forces himself to stay still, to appear calm.

  
“ _You saved me. Again_.”

  
Oswald stood up for him against Butch; backhanded him like a pimp for his insults when no one had even defended him against schoolyard bullies. He does so much for him even when it doesn’t benefit him, and Ed knows it can’t be out of the goodness of his heart. He owes so much to Oswald, who never seems to think so.

  
_I love you_ , he thinks. He wants to say the words, however much it terrifies him.

  
He can’t.

  
Perhaps it’s because he thinks it will scare Oswald. It could be that lingering doubt; _is this mutual or is it all in my head_? Perhaps the attraction is mutual, but Oswald doesn’t love him.

  
Not yet, at least.

  
_I love you_ , he thinks, but he chooses his words carefully.

  
“ _I hope you know, Oswald, that I would do anything for you. You can count on me_.”

  
It’s a declaration in its own right. Ed would do anything for him, even tamper down every urge to kiss him, to take him, to own him, if that’s not what Oswald wants. He feels laid bare even as he hasn’t stated what he wants, what he should. Oswald must know by now that Ed wants him. Ed sits before him open, terrified, hopeful.

  
_Love me back_ , he thinks.

  
Oswald watches him, eyes wide; Ed wonders if his heart is beating as fast as his own, if he also feels that time has slowed down to this moment, to this realization. Something flashes in those bright blue eyes; something like recognition. Something like love.

  
Ed wants more than he can remember ever wanting anything to pull Oswald into his arms, kiss him slow and sweet, but he somehow wills himself to sit still. This is Oswald’s call to make.

  
He waits.

 

Oswald slowly leans in, and Ed’s heart sings. His pulse roars in his ears. He hears himself gasp with the anticipation of Oswald’s kiss.

  
And it never comes.

  
Oswald pulls him into a hug. Ed’s heart splinters and cracks, but he hugs him back, collects Oswald’s small, scarred, injured body into his arms and holds him tight. He’ll take everything he can get, every moment of affection even as it strings with the realization:

  
_He might love you, but not the way you love him_.

  
……………………………..

 

Oswald’s never been in love. He sees it everywhere. He sees people making do with less than love, mistaking things for love, and wants no part of it.

  
Until now.

  
It feels like synapses firing; it feels as though he’s developed another sense he never knew existed. It feels as though separate pieces from places all over have come together to form a complete whole. It feels like coming home. He looks at Ed, his pale throat decorated with the red marks that show everything he just risked for Oswald’s sake, at his dark, fathomless eyes, and thinks he's never seen anything lovelier.

  
His throat closes up; his heart pounds. It all comes together, the realization that makes such perfect sense he doesn’t understand how he could be so blind.

  
_Somewhere along the way I fell in love with this man._

  
He’s never been in love. He’s never had sex. He’s never even kissed anyone. He’d thought it would always be this way, and now he’s faced with a torrent of everything he never thought he’d feel.

  
_“I’d do anything for you.”_

  
_Anything?_

  
God help him, he wants to know what it’s like to kiss him, but the idea terrifies him. He’s a thirty-two-year-old man who doesn’t know how to kiss, and all he can think about is how he’ll humiliate himself if he tried.

  
Ed might just want him back, but how can he? No one has ever been attracted to Oswald. How could a handsome man who, as far as Oswald knows, only dated women, want someone like him? He feels like there’s something between them, like Ed has now indicated some interest, but how could he be sure that what he’s feeling is mutual if he’s never felt it before? If no one’s ever expressed it to him before?

  
He wants to kiss him. He wants know what it’s like, how Ed’s lips would feel on his skin, how he’d touch him. He feels himself move forward, his body acting without permission from coherent thought.

  
He wants _so badly_ to kiss him.

  
But he _can’t_.

  
He pulls Ed into an embrace; he holds him as close as he can, knowing Ed can feel his heart hammering away in his chest as he rests his chin on Ed’s shoulder. He feels he might break if he lets go, even as he knows he’ll have to. He feels whole, he feels safe with Ed’s arms around him even as the terror of the unknown threatens to take over.

  
He lets go eventually because he must. Ed’s touch lingers as Oswald pulls away. He can’t speak; his tongue is dry in his mouth, his throat tight.

  
Ed stares at him, waiting for a response. For a moment, he looks hurt, and Oswald doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t know how any of this works, how to gauge what Ed wants from him. For the first time, he doesn’t know how to read someone.

  
Finally, Ed tries to break the ice. “Oswald, I…”

  
Oswald can’t hear the rest. He doesn’t want to know if Ed can tell what he’s feeling, if he’s going to turn him down before Oswald can even get the chance to ask. He stands.

“Well, get some rest. Have a good night.” He talks quickly, turns without looking back at the man who owns whatever is left of his heart, and heads to his room.

  
He has trouble sleeping that night. Butch escaped police custody. Oswald figures if he sees him again he’ll ignore decorum and kill him like he should have done already. He’ll eviscerate anyone who ever hurt Ed, if he must.

  
He wonders what his mother would think of all this.

  
She’d probably want him to be honest, as she always did. She’d probably tell him that he deserves love; that someone could fall in love with him if they really got to know him. Then again, she always thought better of him than he deserved.

  
So does Ed.

  
He’s found someone who understands him, has seen him at his weakest and saved his life. He’s found someone who knows what it’s like to have no one. He’s found someone who is brilliant but still seems impressed by him.

  
He doesn’t know if Ed’s attracted to him, and doesn’t see how anyone would be, but the people who cared most about him saw good qualities in him that he couldn’t see. Ed has become one of those people. Maybe, in a show of the best luck of his life, Ed could love him back.

  
He’s terrified of the amount of ways everything could go wrong, but he keeps going back to the possibility that what he’s feeling is not only real but mutual. He thinks about how much Ed has risked for him. He thinks about the lilies he laid at his mother’s grave.

  
Tomorrow he’ll tell him.

  
………………………….

 

  
Ed and Oswald don’t share uncomfortable silences. Not normally, anyway. Today Ed has never felt more awkward around Oswald, and it seems to affect them both.

  
There’s no way Oswald couldn’t piece together how Ed feels about him even if he doesn’t know the magnitude, and if the way he abruptly left last night is any indication, he can’t or won’t return those feelings. He spends each moment waiting for, dreading the moment Oswald tells him as much.

  
There are a few moments he thinks Oswald will address what happened last night, but he never does. Oswald cares about him, he knows. He doesn’t want to hurt him in any way, but he will. It’s inevitable. He hurts even now as he watches Oswald talk to a lonely child. Apparently whatever he said was effective, as the child gets up and starts interacting with the other children. His chest tightens.

  
“ _I continue to be in awe of you_.”

  
He imagines he always will be.

  
………………………………………

  
Ed knows Oswald’s waiting until dinner to discuss what happened, and for better or for worse he does want to talk about it. He needs to acknowledge what happened. He wants to know how he can feel so much chemistry with someone who feels nothing back. He wants to know if Oswald is simply incapable of romantic love, and it has nothing to do with him. Most of all, he wants to be proven wrong, that maybe Oswald does want him back but doesn’t know how to express it.

  
_I could teach him_ , he thinks. He examines a bottle of Cabernet—nice vintage, notes of blackberry and tobacco, velvety finish. He’s more of a Pinot Noir man himself, but he’s seen Oswald favor Cabernets and Malbecs, and he has flexible taste with wines. He hears someone come up to stand next to him and glances up.

  
It’s _her._

  
Ed’s heart stops. He stares because he wants to believe that the woman standing next to him isn’t identical in size, shape, and facial features to the woman he loved once. The woman he killed. Her hair is platinum blonde and she isn’t wearing glasses but otherwise

  
Otherwise he’s staring at a ghost. A doppleganger. A hallucination?

  
“Miss Kringle?” he says. He didn’t think his voice would work.

  
She turns and smiles at him.

  
There are so many ways this could go wrong and he has so many questions. With everything supernatural and surreal going on in Gotham, this could be dangerous. She could be dangerous.

  
Even as he rationalizes this, tries to remember everything before this moment, he finds himself entranced. She knows riddles and speaks to him in a voice that sounds just like hers had. She’s flesh and blood before him when he saw her lifeless body almost a year ago. Whoever she is, he wonders if she feels the same wrapped around him, if she makes the same pretty sounds when she comes, if she knows who he is and how much he regrets killing her, if she knows how obsessed he’d been, how she was the catalyst for his evolution.

  
Everything about this feels wrong.

  
And still he stays.

  
_Follow her down_ …

  
………………………………….

 

  
Oswald has a feast prepared; plates of fresh fruits he remembered Ed enjoying, seafood fresh from the docks, baked brie, fresh ciabatta, and Irish butter; roasted meats and vegetables, some dishes that remind him of his childhood that he hopes Ed will enjoy. He has soljanka and goulash laid out alongside chicken Kiev and pelmeni. He has a dessert of espresso, cognac, and petit fours planned just in case but he imagines that even if they eat only a scant amount of each dish they’ll be too full.

  
He practices confessing, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to speak when the time comes, because he wants fiercely and doesn’t know how words can express how everything around him suddenly feels new and exhilarating. How he didn’t know he could feel something like this. How this is a different love from what he’s known.

  
“ _I love you_ ,” he says, and the sound solidifies everything. Now that he’s said it, the weight of everything he feels pulls him down.

  
“I love you,” he repeats, and nothing has ever felt more real.

  
Ed’s running late. At eight fifteen he’s a jumble of nerves as all the food has been set out and he stares at the empty chair across the table, but he assumes Ed is stuck in traffic, even as he knows Ed is never late for anything and tends to account for traffic in advance. He tries calling Ed’s cell phone and gets nothing—could be traffic, he tells himself, and Ed didn’t want to use a phone while driving.

  
At eight-thirty he starts to worry. Butch is on the loose after trying to kill Ed and definitely getting help from Tabitha and _Ed is late for the first time in his life_. He calls again and still no one picks up. He calls Gabe.

  
“Something’s wrong,” he says. He tries to keep his voice even, but these days where Ed is concerned he wears his heart on his sleeve. “Ed was supposed to meet me at the manor over half an hour ago after going out to get wine. I need you to find him, his trail, anything. I think Butch has something to do with it. Tell me everything you find and if you need backup.”

  
He keeps waiting. He watches the cheese and bread harden, watches the vegetables start to wilt, and even as his stomach growls can’t bring himself to eat a single bite.

  
_This was supposed to be with him_.

  
He’ll kill Butch and Tabitha slowly. He’ll draw out their torture for every minute they kept Ed from him, kept Oswald waiting, terrified, wondering if he’s still alive.

  
At nine-fifteen Gabe calls him back.

  
“So I checked out the wine shop where he would’ve probably gone and he’s at a bar a block away.”

  
Oswald didn’t hear correctly. That just isn’t…Ed wouldn’t… “What?”

  
“He’s at Louie’s. You know, that bar on sixteenth—”

  
“I know where that bar is,” Oswald snaps. “Why is he there? Are Butch and Tabitha—”

  
“Nowhere to be seen. He’s with a woman. Blonde, early thirties, pretty. Not someone I recognize, though.”

  
Oswald feels something in his stomach drop. He feels numb.

  
“Boss?”

  
Oswald tries to find his voice. It might not be what it sounds like. It might be something else, although he’s not sure what that could be… “What are they doing?” he asks.

  
“Going on a date, looks like. I mean, they just kissed.”

  
Oswald’s blood is roaring in his ears. The clenched fist of his free hand shakes. He feels the oncoming threat of tears and he tries to keep them at bay. He’s going to be physically ill; everything is shaking, everything white noise over the growing fury as he keeps hearing the words

  
_woman_

  
_pretty_

  
_date_

  
_kissed_

  
“Do you want me to talk to him?”

  
Gabe’s voice pulls him back.

  
He clears his throat. “No. Thanks. Wouldn’t want to spoil anyone’s date.” He laughs. It is kind of funny, he thinks. “Just make sure they don’t get to him.” He hangs up.

  
He looks out at the sea of wasted food, at the empty wineglasses. Without thinking he grabs his glass, gets up, and throws it with all his might at the opposite wall. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help when he does the same with his empty plate, when he screams, the sound like that of an animal, and it feels like shouting into the void.

  
He screams still, bellows at the rage, at the onslaught of emotions that feel too large for him. He feels wetness sliding down his cheeks and realizes he’s crying.

  
Olga and another attendant run into the room and see him as he staggers back. He glances over at Olga. Recognition flashes through her expression and she ushers the other attendant out. “We’ll be back later,” she says. She knows.

  
_What good is love if it’s one-sided?_

  
_Useless to one…_

  
He doesn’t feel like a man. He feels like an empty shell. He feels like there’s a hole cracked in him, pierced with the fiercest winter winds. He clutches at himself as he screams, " _FUCK!"_ so loud it tears his throat, knocks the air out of his lungs.

  
What good is love if it makes him feel like this?

  
He tries to breathe. He stands and looks at everything he’d set out for tonight; the fine china off of which he ate during those all-too-brief-moments he had a father. Those moments he could love again when he once thought such a thing impossible.

  
“What’s the point?” he says aloud. “What’s the _fucking point_?”

  
Ed’s alive, but Oswald’s lost him anyway.

  
He limps over to one of the liquor cabinets and grabs a bottle of scotch. He senses someone looking at him and sees Olga.

  
“I didn’t destroy any of the food, don’t worry,” he says. “Refrigerate what you think will keep. I’m going upstairs. Feel free to drop off anything you don’t mind me breaking. Night.”

  
He goes to his bedroom and breaks one of his lamps. Grabs it like a baseball bat and swings it hard against the wall again and again. He grabs and smashes a vase filled with roses and hurls it at the same place. He grabs a painting of a Victorian era woman looking coquettish and cracks it over his good knee and curses at her broken face until finally his body gives out and he slides to the floor. He wishes he couldn’t feel anything. He wants to go back to the times when he saw other people break their own hearts and thought he was impervious to all of it. He wishes he’d never loved anyone at all, because at least then he would never experience heartbreak.

  
He reaches for the bottle of scotch he dropped on the bed and chugs it from the bottle. He’d gotten it because he liked the smokiness of it and thought it would be a good after-dinner drink but now he doesn’t give a shit about tasting notes or how long it was barrel-aged. He just wants to get so shitfaced he forgets his own goddamn name. He wants to be numb.

  
A little after eleven when Oswald has finished most of the bottle he hears a knock on his bedroom door. It takes him a few tries to stand up and walk to the door, scotch in hand, but he manages.

  
It’s Ed. He looks nervous for some reason. As if he actually gives a shit that he stood Oswald up to hook up with some blonde tart. And still Oswald feels something at his heart give a tug, as if trying to get closer to the man in front of him.

  
“Yes?” he says. He falters, leans on the door for support.

  
“I…” Ed looks Oswald over, notices the bottle clutched loosely in Oswald’s hand, and looks as though he wants to comment on it, but refrains. “Oswald, I’m so sorry.” God, even his voice is dripping with sincerity and yet still Oswald doesn’t know if he can believe him.

  
_So did you bring her here or did you fuck her in the bar bathroom?_ Oswald thinks. “Well, what’s important is that you had a fun evening,” he says, and steps back so he can close the door.

  
“Oswald, please.” Ed reaches out to stop him, looks as though he wants to touch his shoulder before pulling back. _Smart move_. “I lost track of time. I met a woman, Isabella, while getting wine, and, _God_ , this is going to sound terrible, but there was something about her. I couldn’t... I hadn’t known how late I was. It was as though the time went by without us. There’s something _addictive_ about her. I couldn’t get enough.”

  
Oswald stares. _Just when I think he can’t make it worse, he does_. “Huh,” he says. He’s had enough. This evening has already been ruined, and he doesn’t want to give Ed the power to hurt him any more than he already has. He has the sick feeling that for all his rage, that even though part of him wants to smash Ed’s stupid, perfect face into the nearest flat surface, he won’t stop loving him any less. Part of him wants to laugh at that, because it’s so absurd that this has become his life.

  
“Well, congratulations and all that, but as you’ve probably guessed, I’m not an expert when it comes to dating, so,” he slurs a little. He doesn’t care. He just wants tonight to be over. “I’m probably not the person to talk to about these things.”

  
“I’m sorry,” Ed repeats. This time Oswald is sure he means it. But it doesn’t change anything. Oswald has fallen in love with someone who’s saved him, hurt him, liberated him, and now stood him up for a girl he saw at the liquor store.

  
“Good night,” Oswald says, and shuts the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So from here on out I'm basically fucking canon in the ear. There will be, I think, two chapters more of this.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "As she whirls around and around, a tornado now for sure, she screams his name again and again...crying for grief, crying for loss, crying for rage; crying for him to explain how he could leave her so, crying for him to come back, oh to come back."-Lisey's Story; Stephen King

When Isabella heads to the ladies’s room, Ed glances at his watch.

_10:30._

Ed rubs his eyes and looks again. Can’t be right. It was six-thirty just a few minutes ago…

He glances up and notices a figure in the corner; one who works sometimes for Oswald. He looks like he used to be someone’s skull-cracker like Butch, but had the intellect to remain useful even as younger men took his original place. He hasn’t learned the man’s name.

Ed swallows hard as he makes eye contact with the older man, who crosses over to him with a face impassive as stone. “I’m sorry, I know I’m late, but…” _Why are you here? Oswald’s probably pissed off, sure, but he wouldn’t put a hit out on me for showing up late to dinner_.

The man interrupts him and leans in; his voice is quiet but never soft. “He thought Butch had gotten to you, and you never answered your phone, so he had me look for a lead. I let him know you were safe and you’d postponed your night with him indefinitely.”

Ed pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket. He hadn’t remembered turning it on silent, but there are in fact two missed calls from Oswald. One’s from a little after eight-fifteen and the other after eight-thirty. _He thought I was in serious danger_. Ed can’t speak. He doesn’t know how to justify all this to the near-stranger before him. _I’m not some heartless bastard_ , he wants to say.   _I wouldn’t just leave him and scare him like that so I can sleep with the first pretty woman who acknowledges me. I lost track of time; I met someone and she’s too good to be true, she’s perfect and she’s interested in me and she likes riddles and now I can right the wrongs I committed with Kristen. You don’t understand the circumstances; even if it turns out she’s completely different I have so many questions that need answering so many things that could go right or wrong and I can’t leave her behind. You don’t know what it looks like from my side._

The skull-cracker glances in the direction of the bathroom and heads back to his seat before Isabella can come out and see them. Ed had thought about going home with her; now when she comes back out he can’t stay. He can’t make the walk of shame back to the manor with Oswald seeing him like this. It’s not a matter of making sure he has his options open. He just pulled what anyone would call a dick move to his best—hell, his _only_ friend.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her. “I just remembered I was supposed to meet my friend for dinner a couple of hours ago.” He hopes he doesn’t sound too callous. He probably does. Isabella looks disappointed, and hell, so’s Ed. Mostly with himself.

“I understand,” she says, and protests only once when Ed pays both their tabs.

“Can I have your number all the same?” he asks. He’s stuck. He feels as though he’s caught between two points. One is a man he’s known on and off for nearly two years, and in that time their relationship has grown and shifted into a love he never expected to feel and can’t expect to be returned. Only a night ago he felt crushing disappointment when Oswald didn’t reciprocate feelings Ed couldn’t outright declare anyway.

The other is a woman who drew him in at first glance; he feels hypnotized in her presence, fascinated with everything she might mean. She kissed him just earlier tonight, in full view of the bar; his first kiss in a year. Her similarities to Kristen unnerve him; several times through the night he could swear they shift from one form to another before his eyes, but he finds they thrill him just as much as knowing Isabella’s more compatible with him. He’s aware that her appearance, so conveniently perfect, so uncannily similar to someone everyone in Gotham knows he dated and killed, could mean something dangerous—or so he keeps reminding himself. In a way it’s all the more reason to follow her, to learn more about her. She writes her number down on the merchant receipt for the bill and slides it his way; he even likes her handwriting.

“Are you free tomorrow evening?” he asks.

“For you? Absolutely,” she says.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a leading lady of Hollywood’s Golden Age?” he asks. She does. Everything about her screams femme fatale. He imagines her sauntering into a PI’s office, a long cigarette draped between her fingers, as sultry jazz plays in the background.

Isabella laughs; silky music to his ears. “Not at all,” she replies, “but I could get used to hearing you say it.”

 

He kisses her again after he walks her to her car. He knows that Oswald’s guy is tailing him; he ignores it in favor of caressing the side of Isabella’s face as he brushes his tongue over her bottom lip, of tucking an errant lock of blonde hair behind her ear as he pulls away. “Good night,” he murmurs against her lips. When he turns and walks back, he sees the older man glare at him.

“ _What?_ ” he finally snaps.

“Just making sure you don’t get ambushed on the way home,” the man says. “Orders from above.”

Ed glares back at him for a moment before muttering, “ _A little late for that_ ,” turning on his heel, and walking to his own car. The wine store’s closed for the night; he can’t pick up a Rodney Strong Cabernet in Oswald’s favorite vintage as a peace offering, so he heads home. He’s not annoyed about the watchdog; he mostly feels like the world’s worst friend.

He wonders how it must look to Oswald, not even twenty-four hours after hearing “ _I’d do anything for you_ ” to have him not even bother showing up to a scheduled dinner. And doing it so he could have drinks with a woman he’d just met.

He should probably tell Oswald his suspicions, have someone on the lookout while he gets to know someone who could simply be a coincidental doppelganger or could be one of Strange’s escaped projects. Anything that presents a danger to Ed is going to be bad for Oswald.

Although...better not mention it tonight.

Oswald’s definitely still awake, even if he’s furious with him, so Ed takes the chance and knocks on his bedroom door. _Please don’t hate me_ , Ed thinks. There is a part of him, a part of him that knows Oswald will never hate him. He knows he may be the only one now safe from Oswald’s wrath. Still, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he sees Oswald, drunk and glassy-eyed open the door.

He looks very breakable; his eyes are bloodshot and puffy. He’s holding a fifth of scotch loosely in his fist and he sways as he stands. Ed was never that good at telling these things, but Oswald doesn’t even seem that angry; this could be because he’s too plastered to show any real animosity. He seems more disappointed than anything, and doesn’t care for Ed’s apologies or excuses.

“ _Congratulations and all that, but I’m not an expert when it comes to dating_ ,” Oswald tells him. Ed knows. If Oswald was, things could have turned out differently.

 _You held my heart in your hand and gave it back_ , Ed thinks. _And it hurts and I still wish things were different. I wish I was strong enough to be honest with you in everything that could have happened. I wish I hadn’t disappointed you. I wish you could return everything I feel and I wish I wasn’t caught between two such contrasting people_.

He tries to keep Oswald listening to words he cannot speak.

Oswald shuts the door on him.

Ed doesn’t sing in the shower before bed that night; he tries and fails to prevent himself from jerking off to images of green eyes shifting to blue, of a soft, feminine body taking his cock with sweet sighs to a smaller, jagged body all edges and scars and lower-pitched gasps.

It takes him a long time to get to sleep that night.

 

..............................................................

 

Oswald wakes up with a hangover that could cripple a rhino; his very bones ache and he feels as though his skeleton is going to jump out of his body. Otherwise, he feels like shit. He feels so much for someone who, as it turns out, feels nothing for him. At least, nothing compared to a blonde girl he met for a few hours while buying alcohol.

He gets up on time anyway, and after throwing up (he makes it to the toilet bowl before he retches, thank God) he takes some aspirin and gets ready for the day even as every fiber of his being wants to crawl back into bed and preferably slip into a coma.

Ed’s at the dining room table, fully dressed and, thankfully, alone. He turns to look at Oswald and has the expression of a deer in the headlights that Oswald does his best to ignore.

“Morning,” Oswald says, and pulls up a chair as far away from him as possible. “For some reason I thought you brought your new girlfriend here for the night.” He says it partly to himself; as with his love, saying the words aloud gives them shape, thrusts the idea into reality. _Ed has a new girlfriend. Ed doesn’t love him_.

Ed shakes his head. “Ah, no. I felt that would be in poor taste, considering my behavior last night.” He drums his fingers beside his plate. “I should apologize again for…”

Oswald waves his hand. He could lie. He does it constantly. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he interrupts. He looks over at Ed and catalogs everything: the large, graceful hands and long, dexterous fingers that wrap around the handle of his coffee mug, the elegant line of his back and neck, the impossibly handsome face framed by glasses that make his dark eyes appear that much more intense. Of course other people would be attracted to him, even if they didn’t know the beautiful, brilliant brain that body housed. He could lie, and in some respects he does, but his hangover does affect his acting ability. “Any scenario, whether you had brought her home or stayed the night at her place, any of that is better than seeing you get hurt.” That doesn’t mean they don’t make him sick to his stomach, but for now he can pretend his heart isn’t caving in.

“ _I’d do anything for you,_ ” Ed told him not two days ago. And see how that’s unraveled all too soon.

“I’ll let Olga know you’re ready for breakfast,” Ed says and rises to stand. “I have your daily itineraries here,” he hands Oswald two folders, “and…I have to ask you something.”

A day ago Oswald would’ve felt hopeful. He would’ve thought of only a few scenarios, mostly involving Ed asking Oswald on a date. Now the question could pertain to any number of things and Oswald doesn’t want to hear any of them. He tilts his head as if he’s curious.

“I’ve asked Isabella out on a date this evening.”

Oswald blinks. Ed says nothing for longer than he likes. “ _Yes?_ ” he prompts.

“I’m probably going to bring her back here this time.”

 _Delightful_. He hopes Ed isn’t going to ask if Oswald wants to meet her; he already knows enough. He knows she’s a pretty blonde woman around his age named Isabella, he knows Ed fell in love with her at first sight, and he knows he hates her. He imagines having to sit with them at dinner as they giggle and hold hands and kiss across the table while Oswald tries his best not to stab the interloper in the eye with an oyster fork.  “So what’s the question?”

Ed blinks and draws back. He looks as awkward and uncomfortable as Oswald feels. “I guess there wasn’t one.” He lowers his gaze and walks out as Olga comes in with a breakfast tray. Olga glares after him.

“ _Mudak_ ,” she says under her breath before setting the tray in front of Oswald. Nothing appeals to him except the water and coffee, which he drinks while looking over his legal itinerary.

He has to go over zoning boards for the school system. Great. He wonders how much backlash he’ll get if he suggests bussing students from neighborhoods like the one where he grew up to nicer school districts and vice versa. That’ll keep the fuckers on their toes. They might even hire actual accredited teachers.

“Actually, I have one question,” Ed says as he walks back in and stands ramrod straight and rigid before Oswald. He’s a tall bundle of nerves, Oswald notices. Almost as bad as he’d been the other day. “Yesterday you said you had something important to tell me over dinner. May I ask what it was?”

Oswald looks up at Ed, sees the nervousness and his intensity. He sees everything Ed is willing to do for him except what Oswald wants more than anything. Did he know what Oswald felt— _oh, fuck it_ , what he still feels now, and want to call him on it? Or had he really not known? Either way, Oswald loses, and he can’t stop it. Either way, Oswald’s alone. Either way, same answer.

“Turns out it didn’t mean anything after all,” he says.  Emotion control has never been his strongest suit; he holds it together, though.  Says it with a straight face to the only person he's ever loved outside of his own family.  He'll keep it together.  He must.

 Ed seems to study him—just like when they first met and Oswald couldn’t stand him and his disregard for personal space. It wasn’t love at first sight, not for him. Something in his expression gives. Oswald imagines it’s disappointment, but he realizes he no longer understands Ed, and he breaks just a little more.

He supposes he could hire someone to track down and take this Isabella woman out. Ed will find out, though—he’s a former forensic scientist, after all—and will hate him for it once he does. Even now that he’s lost him, he at least has Ed’s loyalty and friendship, and he doesn’t know how he’d manage without even that. Having someone simply cut up Isabella’s face would probably have the same effect, and she’ll still be in the picture.

He expected to feel angrier about this. Instead he still feels like little more than a hollowed out dead tree; he cracks and splinters every time the cold wind gusts through him and chips away at what’s left of him.

He finds it hilarious that he ever thought someone could be attracted to him. _Him_ , the scrawny little freak with the Mommy issues, the Daddy issues, the Napoloeonic Complex, bum leg, and homely features. He thinks he was right the first time when he assumed he was a stronger man without love. He can hardly believe he was so _stupid_ to think he stood a chance with anyone, let alone someone who has only ever shown an interest in women. He thinks he’ll do whatever he can to kill his heart and become invulnerable to all of life’s insults, to the heartbreak and rejection for feelings he never expected, never wanted to have. It’s all he can do. He’s not someone people find beautiful, who people fall in love with, and he never has been.

 

...............................................................

 

Several hours of sleep have not made it easier for Ed to talk to Oswald. The time he’s spent excited about the prospect of a date with the most flawless human being he has ever met haven’t assuaged what he already feels for one of the most flawed. Oswald seems fine, hangover and all. It’s as though he hadn’t put away an entire fifth of scotch while having Ed tracked to make sure he hadn’t been kidnapped.

Oswald brings up Isabella first, says the word “ _girlfriend_ ” so casually, being the first one to bring up that label. And perhaps he’s right. Ed supposes he already sees her as such, even as he wonders at every possibility and suspicious circumstance surrounding Isabella’s existence in his twisted and tremendous world. He wonders if he wants to keep seeing her because he has questions or if he has questions because he wants to keep seeing her.

He can’t explain how positively narcotic it feels to have someone be openly, immediately attracted to him after crushing rejection, after falling for a woman who at the first and the last found him repulsive, after falling for a man who, for all the good he’s done, for the bond they share, has shown repeatedly that he _just doesn’t see Ed that way_. He can’t argue with brain chemistry, with sexual orientation; it’s not a puzzle to solve nor an obstacle to surmount, even as he knows his feelings for Oswald aren’t over. The want, the rejection, linger still as he plans his date for the night over the phone; as he grips the edge of desk until his knuckles turn white when he hears her voice like a beacon, like a warning.

 _She sounds just like her_.

Part of him knows adrift in every jumbled thought and urge that fights for coherence at the front of his mind that it would be safer, smarter, to tell Oswald about this. Someone should know going in that he’s meeting someone identical to his dead former lover. Someone on the outside looking at all this objectively, someone who can keep a clear head around her. But what if they prevent him from seeing her? What if, in all this madness, he gets to lose himself inside of her once more

_for the first time, idiot. They’re not the same person_

and find some catharsis he didn’t realize he needs.

He ignores the tremor in his hands as he goes back to Oswald and hopes he looks collected and in full control of his faculties.

Oswald doesn’t have to know.

 

.................................

 

 

“I’m going to visit my parents tonight,” Oswald says on the drive home from a meeting.

It went even worse than Oswald had expected. In this shitstorm with Ed, he can’t—yet—risk endangering Ed’s new floozy, and he can’t and _won’t_ lash out at Ed. That just leaves everyone else, and meeting with the board of education, a bunch of self-righteous pricks who think bussing schools attracts “the wrong sort of crowd,” devolved into a near-shouting match.

If only he had another Mr. Leonard at his immediate disposal. He finds it amazing that at no point when he slammed his palms down on the table did he say, _And fuck you, you dumb_ _blonde slut. Who the fuck do you think you are, acting like the star of your own private romantic comedy and stealing away the only man I’ll ever love?_ to the head of the board of education in his fury. The worst of it was the moments he saw Ed watch him with open admiration, as though Oswald was a far better man, and it made Oswald physically recoil. His palpable excitement and slow grin when Oswald instilled the fear of God into men he otherwise would have made sure to placate.

 _Don’t do that_ , he thought. _Don’t look at me like that if you don’t feel anything for me_. And in turn it just made him angrier, made him nearly completely lose it and toss out threats like he was meeting with lowlife thugs.

Now, as they sit in the back of his limo, Ed looks up from his papers. “Would you like me to order some flowers in advance?”

Oswald shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’ll handle it.”

Ed presses on. Oswald really wishes he wouldn’t. He’s still hungover and heartbroken and his patience being in anyone’s company is down to the goddamn wire. “Are you sure? I could order two bouquets. Lilies, of course, and perhaps orchids? You know, purple orchids are known to symbolize respect—”

“Ed, you don’t have to use my dead parents as an excuse to buy flowers for your girlfriend,” Oswald snaps.

Silence stretches between them. “I’m sorry,” Oswald says finally.

Ed shakes his head. “No, it’s. I understand.” The air between them feels tainted. There’s so much he wants to say to him, but he _can’t_.

 _Can’t we just go back to the fire, to the couch? Can we do that, Ed_?

 

............................................

 

In the end Oswald does buy a bouquet of purple orchids along with a bouquet of star lilies; he justifies it with the thought that his father didn’t appear to have a favorite flower.

He visits his headstone first.

“I’m sorry I’m not the man you thought I was,” Oswald tells him; he’s not sure he believes in the afterlife, but the comfort of saying the words helps. “I wish I could’ve been, wish you could forgive me for everything that happened, after…” he trails off. He doesn’t regret what he did; he just wishes he knew his father would’ve still loved him.

“We met when I thought my life was over,” he says. “I had nothing, no one. I’d been tortured and brainwashed and wouldn’t have survived another day without you. You saved my life, you gave me a home, treated me as though all the missing years meant nothing. I loved you when I thought I could never love anyone again.”

_And it’s happened once more_

“I still do. I couldn’t be prouder to know you were my father. That you were such a good, honest man who cared about my mother even after the years of separation.” Oswald keeps it together, holds it together. “I know now what it’s like to love someone and know that there’s no way it can work.

“And I wish I could still talk to you. I wish I’d had more time to know you; you were one of the best men I’ve ever known.”

He touches his father’s gravestone. He doesn’t cry; he might, later, as he’s commissioned his parents’s headstones to be set together, but he’s dry-eyed for now. “I don’t know if I’ll die in thirty years or next week, but I know I’d give up the time I had left to still have you around.”

He sets the lilies down in front of his mother’s grave.  He tries not to think about seeing the lilies Ed had laid down in his absence.

“Guess what?” he says. “I fell in love for the first time recently.

"It’s with a man,” he adds. “I wasn’t expecting that. Granted, I never expected anyone. Don’t know if that surprises you."  Mother had loathed the idea of him running off with a "woman of the night" and yet had somewhat old-fashioned notions of love and such.  He doesn't know.  He will never able to ask.

“I think you would have liked him. He’s good-looking, fastidious. Incredibly bright. He has a brain like a bear trap. He saved my life after you…” he stops. “ _Well_. He found me dying in the woods and took care of me. He pulled a bit of amateur ER doctor, but we both knew even then that I would’ve been arrested the moment I set foot in a real hospital.”

He’d like to think that his mother ultimately wouldn’t care about the gender, that she’d coo and fuss over whoever Oswald fell in love with. She’d impressed on him that many women were whores; women meant only to undermine their bond, but she’d also talked about true love as though that was something possible for him. As though the past thirty years of him never wanting anyone of any gender and her worrying that he’d fallen in with the wrong sort of woman was no deterrence.

“He’s like me. He’s done bad things, and he’s gonna do more, but,” he laughs a little then, “I’m crazy about him. We work, somehow. He has this fascination with riddles, and it’s kind of annoying, but,” he laughs again. “It’s starting to grow on me. He used to be a forensic scientist. _Yeah_.” He nods as he imagines his mother’s impressed reaction. “Your son fell in love with scientist. Not a gangster, not a prostitute. A convicted criminal, but who isn’t these days?”

He takes a deep breath. “He loves someone else. Someone he just met. Love’s weird, I guess? We went through so much together but suddenly a pretty girl shows up and…” he clicks his teeth. “You talked about true love, but not the finer points. What if he’s the love of my life,” he laughs once again. He doesn’t understand why, except that it’s the only way to stave off tears for a little while longer. “What if he’s my soulmate, but I’m not his?”

He glances over at his father’s headstone. “He loved you, you know. He never forgot about you. Was he the one for you? Was he your true love?”

He scrubs his hand over his mouth and tries to keep composed, to hold out just a little longer. “If he was, how were you able to leave him? I’m genuinely asking. I don’t know how to separate myself from this.”

Ed likes _women_. And _no one_ likes Oswald.

“I wish I could. I wish I could leave all this behind. I wish…” He’s fallen pretty far from the church, but there are times in his life he thinks he’s being punished for his sins, his parents’s murders being the most significant punishments and this, this slow ache that threatens to bury itself within his chest and fester until he drives himself mad. How satisfying would it be for so many people to know that Oswald’s stone-cold heart beat and bled for someone who could never love him? Maroni probably would have gotten quite the laugh out of that.

“I wish I was impervious. I wish I was made of stone. I wish I couldn’t love any more.

“But I do.” He trails one hand over her gravestone. “ _I miss you so much_ ,” he tells her. He misses her mixing languages when an idiom in a different language was a better fit. He misses her bustling energy, her smile like sunlight. He imagines her meeting Ed and fussing over his lanky frame, making sure he’s eating enough, exclaiming at how handsome he is and preening over every bit of flattery Ed would undoubtedly send her way. He imagines she wouldn’t know the riddles, but act impressed when Ed answered them for her. He imagines his mother, short even compared to him, trying to reach up and pinch Ed’s cheek and ask coyly if he has anyone special in his life and shrieking in delight when Ed blushes and admits to his interest in her precious little boy.

He imagines it all, and he laughs until laughter turns to tears. He imagines it all, everything that will never happen, every moment with his parents he’ll never see, every moment with Ed he’ll never get.

 

.......................................................

 

 

Isabella impresses Ed with her understanding of different wines, her knowledge of Shakespeare, Faulkner, Tolstoy, Nabakov. She cheerfully answers every riddle Ed sends her way and comes up with a few more of her own.

She’s a librarian; a former English major who moved to Gotham from Maine to see what the city had to offer her and her favorite romances are _Wuthering Heights_ and _Romeo and Juliet_. That last bit does worry him a little, neither of them felt like the kind of love he’d always imagined, but he doesn’t press. Ed deflects as much about himself as he can. He imagines at some point Isabella will learn all about him; it was in the papers, after all, and he’s controversial as a public figure; a convicted murderer and madman working for another convicted murderer and madman. Perhaps she already knows, but chooses not to discuss it yet. Perhaps she’s waiting for a more private setting.

The more they speak, the more he believes the resemblance is a coincidence. Or perhaps he just has to believe it. Perhaps the idea of someone compatible who likes him turning out to be a hoax seems just too cruel for what he’s experienced.

He doesn’t serve under the delusion of being a good, morally upright man, but he thinks he’s suffered for love enough, that her interest in him seems genuine, that he’s thrilled at the idea of someone being attracted to him; not the overdue, reluctant interest from Miss Kringle, not the unreturned feelings of Oswald, but a woman watching him from the onset with bedroom eyes.

“Have you ever been in love, Edward?” she asks him.

Ed catches those pretty green eyes and her coy little smile. _More than once. Both times I wound up empty-handed; one dead, and the other incapable of loving me back. If I fall for you as quickly as I think I’m falling already, will this be the one time it works out? Is this a stroke of incredibly good luck?_

 _How do you even know this is real?_ Were it not for the fact their server acknowledges her, and the bartender from the night before, he could’ve been hallucinating.

He ignores the thought and tells her, “Yes, and it ended badly. For a long time I thought I’d never love again.”

“And now?”

He smiles. “Now I know I cannot live without love.”

When they get the bill, he invites her over to the manor; she lays her hand on his knee as he drives and he manages not to crash on the way home. Quite a feat, since he keeps imagining her drawing her hand back to cup him at any moment.

 

“There’s something I’d like to show you; as a librarian you might enjoy it,” he tells her as he takes her by the hand and leads her over the threshold. Oswald probably isn’t home; that will probably make things easier for everyone. He ignores how similarly her hand fits in his to Kristen’s.

“Oh?” she asks. “There’s so much here; you say it belongs to your boss?”

“Boss and best friend. He inherited the place.”

“Friends in high places and all that,” she muses.

"More like long-lost family he didn't meet til he was thirty."  Part of what he loves so much about Oswald, really.  He wasn't born into privilege, but fought and tooth and nail to survive.  This is an upbringing Oswald never knew, and he's a stronger man for it.

“How’d you meet?”

“I…” he glances over. He can finesse this. He’s sure of it.

“It was at my old job at the GCPD. He wasn’t mayor then, just a public figure and businessman.”

Well, that’s _one_ way of putting it. It’d been before he’d really thought about committing crimes and embracing Oswald’s world, but he’d been fascinated even then. Perhaps a part of him was already smitten and he hadn’t seen it.

“And you became friends just like that?” Isabella asks as he leads her forwards.

Ed laughs. “No, not at all. The friendship came later, but from the beginning he’d felt like a kindred spirit.” Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say. It’s true, certainly, but from the way Isabella narrows her eyes it might be inappropriate. Probably is, considering his feelings towards Oswald are by and large considered inappropriate.

He’s read books, watched movies in which the protagonist was faced with the ultimatum: “ _Go down one corridor or the other, but know you can never come back_.” He feels he is in that situation, and he understands he’s actively going down one route, the only route that works for him right now, but he finds himself looking back at the other door. He doesn’t say any of this, thankfully, as on edge as he feels.

_You know how dangerous she could be, how many people want you dead. You must know you’re going in blind._

They reach their destination. “You’re going to love this,” Ed tells her, and opens the door to the Van Dahl home library.

It’s larger than his old apartment and elegantly furnished wall-to-wall with first-edition hardback books of every genre. Ed used to dream of living in a place that had its own library. Aside from the music room this is his favorite part of the estate.

“My God,” Isabella says softly as she drops her purse on the side table and explores the space. She trails her fingertips over history books and poetry collections before turning to Ed with a grin. “You already know me too well,” she tells him.

She saunters towards him, luxurious hips swaying deliberately under her skirt. “Certainly know how to get a girl in the mood.”

Ed’s throat catches. His mind devolves to static. He doesn’t register his own footsteps as he walks the rest of the distance. He hasn’t slept with anyone in a year. Hell, he’d _never_ slept with anyone before that time.

“Do..” he clears his throat. “Do you have any…?” He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Well, he _did_ , but they’re in his suite, and he doubts Oswald ever thought to stock the library with condoms for his own wild and crazy sexcapades.

“In my purse,” she tells him.

Her lips taste like cherries and her waist and hips fill his hands exactly the way she

_No_

If there is foul play in this he doesn’t know if he can pull himself away, doesn’t know if he won’t try to enjoy the descent before it catches up with him, doesn’t know if he can be safe or objective around someone who feels like she was designed specifically to entice him, because his cock couldn’t care less about any of it.

_Stop_

One hand cups the soft curve of her left breast as his tongue tastes the wine from their dinner, the after-eight mint that came later, and feels he could drown, feels like maybe he is already. Whoever this is, whatever the risk, just take it, take the bounty, the beauty, and enjoy the insanity.

Her hands move to his belt

It’s been so long…

_that night with her_

_it wasn’t_ her…

_this has to stop_

“I can’t.” He pulls away from her and her warm, soft body and warm, soft lips. Her presence is narcotic, and yes, there’s a part of him that wants nothing more than to take her here and now, to slide her onto him and fuck her against the bookshelves, to pull the neckline of her dress down and see if her nipples were the same rosy color as Kristen’s, if they’re as sensitive as hers had been.

That’s _why_ he can’t. She’s not Kristen, but she’s so eerily similar in so many ways he can feel his sanity slipping, his sense of reality bent and misshapen to accommodate someone who is physically so much like her, who appeared in Gotham one day with no connection to anything or anyone but him, who knew from first glance that _he likes riddles_.

And what’s else, there’s a man he loves who might not want him back, and _she_ came into his life at the crux of his fears that he was stuck in a one-sided love. For all Isabella’s perfections, Ed still wants Oswald, and he knows neither would ever share his affections. He needs to take a step back, to _breathe_ , to collect himself. He needs a _moment,_ goddamnit.

He feels the way he did when he was thirteen and so strung out on the overlapping behavioral meds his parents had forced him to take that he felt his body would give out from the stress of it.

 _(It did, and while he was in the ER his parents altered his medications to ones only slightly less damaging, because he was still not normal enough, and yelled at him, punished him for the money he cost them for trying to fix him. He never forgave them_.)

“You don’t want to make love to me?” Isabella asks.

_apple-green eyes wide and hurt as she trails her hands down to his hips and he wants her to bring them between his legs_

“It’s not that,” Ed tells her. Of course he wants to. He’s half-hard even now. That’s not the point. “I just think we need to call it a night.” The next words fall from his lips as an apology; “I don’t know if this is going to work.”

Isabella draws back. She looks close to tears, and Ed almost panics.

 _Anything_ but tears, _anything_ but seeing her hurt. He can’t let her stay here now if he wants to be able to think, but the idea of her in pain makes him start to tremble. _You killed Kristen and now you make this woman cry?_ “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says. He could provide a litany of apologies for everything that he is, for everything he’s done and will do if she stays. “I just…”

“Are you asking me to leave?” she asks. Her voice is very small.

Ed’s throat is too dry for him to speak. He hates himself for every time he imagines the beautiful, perfect woman in front of him as the woman he’d killed, for every time she looks at him and he sees Kristen’s face, for every time he thinks about the words between him and Oswald left unspoken, the questions left unanswered, the fact that he could be attracted to two so very different people at once. He’s never hated himself more than he does at this moment, and he does all he can to remain composed as words fail him and he nods.

Isabella looks down for a moment and wordlessly walks to the end table for her purse. As she rummages through it she asks, calmer than he could possibly be, “Could I at least have one last kiss for the road?”

Ed’s heart beats so fast he imagines it may burst, and part of him knows this is a terrible idea; better to leave her alone than become even more addicted to her, but he steps forward and wraps an arm around her waist.

Her lips are perfect; her kiss sweet and teasing as she licks his bottom lip, pries his mouth open and suckles on his tongue.

 _Someone like this shouldn’t exist_ , Ed thinks. Then he feels a sharp pinch at his neck and everything goes dark.

……………………………….

Ed wakes up when he feels a searing charge in his side; an electric shock that makes him cry out. He realizes he’s completely bound; he’s tied to a chair and the ropes are too tight for him to fenagle.

He opens his eyes and sees Isabella’s face, sees a Taser in her now-gloved hand. Her expression reminds him of Oswald’s when they worked on Mr. Leonard.

Ed’s going to die.

“Isabella, please…” he starts, doesn’t make it more than two words before she slaps him across the face, first with the front of her hand, then the back, and again, and again. His glasses fly off and crack as they hit the ground; his lip cracks and bleeds; his nose probably isn't broken, but _boy_ does it hurt all the same.

“Shut up. Shut the _fuck_ up, you _asshole_. You _animal_.” Her voice escalates to a shout as she brings her face close in to his.

“Twins,” he says suddenly. Of course. Of all the possibilities, he overlooked the most glaring one. “She was your twin.”  

Isabella smirks, and then for his disobedience rewards him with another shock to the side.

_Sometimes a simple solution is best._

How could he be so _stupid?_

He looks around him; he’s in a mostly-empty warehouse. To his right he notices a table filled with different instruments he wants nowhere near his body--certainly not without a safeword.

Farther off he notices a pair of shadows; one slimmer, the other much broader. He groans as the figures come into his view.

“Of _course_ ,” he mutters. Butch and Tabitha reach Isabella’s side; without his glasses he can’t quite make it out, but he imagines Butch is smirking at him. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.”

Isabella shrugs and nods as she sets down the Taser and picks up a wrench. It looks too crude for her feminine hand but she seems to know how to use it, judging by how swiftly she swings it across his face.

He feels part of his nose break; a tooth is jarred loose in his mouth and he chokes on the taste of his own blood; for a moment he can’t see, can’t hear anything over the impact reverberating through his body. He groans at the pain of it as it lingers and grows. “Essentially, yes.”

“May I?” Butch asks, and holds his hand out expectantly.

Isabella glances down at Ed and back at Butch.

“A deal’s a deal,” she replies, and slips the wrench into his meaty palm.

Butch slams it against Ed’s left shoulder. Ed doesn’t register his own scream; all he hears is the crunching of bones, the pop of his shoulder out of place and how it now dangles uselessly at his side. He’s aware of the blood seeping out of the corner of his mouth, sliding down his chin and collecting on his lap. He tastes the loose tooth in his mouth as he tries to hold everything back, not give Butch any more satisfaction as the man laughs.

“So. How do you expect to weasel your way out of this?” Butch asks. “You’re not as smart as you thought you were. You were never tough. How do you think you’re going to do here?”

Ed collects as much saliva as he can. He spits in Butch’s face; blood, spit, tooth, and all. The entire left side of his body is throbbing, and at the epicenter his dislocated shoulder. He tries to let the pain keep him sharp, tries to center it the way he imagines people much stronger than he have managed, and laughs, cackles loud and jarring at Butch’s ruddy face. He keeps laughing as Butch punches him; breaks his nose again, knocks the sight out of his eye and he wonders for a split second if he pushed it so far back into his skull he’ll never see out of it again.

He spits another mouthful of blood at him. “Oswald’s going to kill all three of you,” he says. “Anything you’ll try to do to me he’ll increase tenfold.”

Butch stands back. He doesn’t seem worried. He should. “I imagine he’ll try. He has a real blind spot for you. And we want him to see this. He’ll come for you, no doubt about that,” he adds when he sees Ed’s expression. “He’ll figure out where you are.

“Thing is,” Butch adds, “He’s so ass-over-umbrella in love with you I also figure he’ll do whatever he can to keep you alive.”

Ed can’t breathe for a moment. Everything devolves to fuzz and white noise as he replays those words.

_in love with you_

Except there’s no way that’s possible… Of all the things that’s happened to him here, those words may be the most devastating.

He needs air, he needs space. He thinks of how he could’ve avoided all of this if he’d been honest.

_If this is true..._

If this is true he could be with Oswald right now. He’s furious. Butch isn’t the one who was supposed to tell him this. Butch has no _fucking_ right to have an opinion on their relationship.

“How could a moron like you see it but not I?” he demands.

“Because you’re both idiots,” Tabitha says from behind Butch. She saunters over, elegant, cat-like, and lethal. “Emotionally stunted little psychopaths who don’t know how relationships work. It’s why we had to get to you first. It’s the whole reason you’re sitting here.” She rests a hand on Butch’s shoulder and passes him a handkerchief to wipe the blood off his face. He glances between them. All want him dead. All seem to be waiting for Oswald.

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” he says. “No matter what he promises you.”

“I promised Isabella she could do the honors. Part of our arrangement.” Ed looks over at Isabella, at her face as she regards him with utmost loathing; his eyes aren't great, but he knows it's the same look he saw on Kristen’s face before he---

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “You have to believe me; it was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her and I never stopped—”

Isabella takes a wooden bat from the table and swings it across Ed’s ribcage. Ed howls; he has no dignity in this. He hears his scream echo through the warehouse; everything splinters inside of him; his body feels as though it’s caving in. Tears form in the corner of his eyes. If he has to die, let it be right now. Let it be before it gets worse, let it be before he hears any more. If Oswald doesn’t come soon, if he doesn’t get to see his face one last time…

“Remember what I said about shutting up?” Isabella asks.

Ed can’t bring himself to form any words; all that comes are his gasps for air even as possibly broken ribs seem to suffocate him with the pain he draws from each breath. He doesn’t think he’s punctured any of his organs, but who knows at this point?

“I bet you have a lot of questions,” she says. She holds the bat like it’s a rifle. “Yes, I wanted to hunt you down when the justice system failed and Arkham let you free. Yes, I found someone who hates you almost as much as I do. Yes, we worked together _before_ you got him fired and he gave me all the information he had. That, and the occasional phone call from my sister. You know, back before you _murdered her_.

“She hated you at first, you know. Complained about a creepy guy at work who followed her around with weird riddles; said you seemed like the kind of person that jacks off to the cadavers. Hell, maybe you do.” She laughs. “I mean, if you couldn’t look at _me_ without pitching a tent when you were the one who chopped up _her_ body, anything’s possible. Even the last time I talked to her, when she said she was going on a date she thought there was something off about you, thought she might be making a mistake. Yeah, you were smart and kind of cute, but she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something seriously wrong with you.

“I told her to trust her instincts; if her gut feeling had told her before to stay away, then stay away. But she felt obligated. And lonely.”

Ed looks at her face; pristine and lovely even in all her rage. He used to think that he hoped Kristen’s face would be the last thing he ever sees, that he’d die for her. He starts laughing. He doesn’t think they realize how complete their revenge is. He could go on about the symbolism of it all, the pure poetry of a man who loves him watching him die like everyone else he’s ever loved, of a beautiful, brilliant dream of a woman killing him over the very real woman she’d represented, of all his guilt and eventual transformation over what he’d done inevitably meaning nothing. He laughs as she swings the bat across his dislocated arm, as she cracks the other side of his ribcage, until finally she cracks the bat against his skull.

 

......................................................................................

 

 

Oswald doesn’t want to go home; he figures he could hit up a bar and nurse his waning hangover with the promise of another one, but he doesn’t feel like drinking, either. His phone rings.

“Boss, we got something. You won’t like it.”

Oswald adjusts his grip on his phone. It’s something involving Butch, then. “What happened?”

“Your cleaner found a note in the library—looks like your guy was kidnapped.”

Oswald knows who Gabe means, but still bristles. “My ‘ _guy_?’” he repeats.

“And we got a sighting near the manor—Olga says she saw two women getting into a car but had seen only one of those women come in.”

“A pretty blonde girl in her early thirties,” Oswald says. He closes his eyes. He tries to regulate his breathing. He’s going to gut her like a fish; he’s going to kill her slowly with rusted blades for stealing Ed from him not once, but twice. He’ll carve out her fucking heart. “I’m on my way home. Get as many weapons ready as you can.”

 

...................................................................

 

 

“Show me the note,” Oswald says as soon as he walks through the front door and sees Gabe, Olga, and the house cleaner.

The note isn’t in Ed’s near-indecipherable chicken scratch, though, but neat print, and it starts with a fucking riddle.

 

 

_-I am the beginning of every end, I am the end of every place. I am the beginning of eternity and the end of time and space. What am I?_

_We have your riddle-man right where we want him. My question is, do you understand riddles yourself enough to find him? Don’t keep us waiting._

 

 

“The _fuck_ ,” Oswald mutters. He’s half-tempted to tear the paper if he wasn’t so terrified for Ed. He doesn’t know how many people he might need; he can get Zsasz, he flits in and out of accessibility, but he lets himself get tracked down for the time being. He doesn’t want cops; cops will try to play fair, and nothing in the situation calls for fairness, but he needs to have 911 on standby just in case.

 _Jim_. For a second he’s almost amused by the idea of having Jim help him save a man he hates, but there’s little time for him to appreciate the image of Jim’s put-out expression instead of making a worthwhile offer for his cooperation.

_The beginning of every end…_

The phone rings; Jim orders on the second ring, and doesn’t sound too far in when he says, “Hello?”

“Sober up, Jim. I have a job offer for you,” Oswald tells him. “Lucrative pay, a chance to get a few licks in at a few old foes, all that good stuff.” Oswald still holds the paper with the riddle in his free hand.

 _Beginning of eternity, end of time and space_ …

“Tempting, but you do know that, mayor or not, I don’t actually like you, right?”

“Yeah, yeah; feeling’s mutual, Jimbo. I’ll double your rate. And you might see my best friend get beaten to a pulp, depending on how late we arrive.”

Jim pauses on the other end of the line. “I’m listening.”

“Ed was kidnapped by a woman he went on a date with tonight; I’m guessing a plant of some kind, maybe in league with Butch.”

“Where’re they keeping him?”

“They…”

_End of time and space_

_End of every middle_

“E.” Of course. Of _fucking_ course. “They’re keeping him in one of the warehouses along E street; presumably in the E compound. So are you going to meet us there or what?”

After a moment, Jim says, “Fine. But just know that what cinched is it getting to see Nygma get the shit kicked out of him.”

“Great. Don’t care. See you there in five.”

 

................................

 

 

He calls Zsasz, and winces at the ringtone. “Tubthumping, Zsasz? I’d have almost preferred you stayed with Funkytown.”

“What is it?”

“Butch and Tabitha have Ed. The location is in the E section compound along the E street warehouses. We’re scouting ahead and we need your help.”

“ _We_?”

“I’m bringing Jim Gordon. Now play nice.”

 

......................................................................

 

 

When he first sees only Ed, slumped over in a chair and barely breathing—but, thank God, still somehow alive—Oswald loses all sense of self-preservation.

“ _Ed!_ ” he hears his voice break when he takes full stock of Ed’s broken nose, his bruised eye and jaw, his bleeding mouth and his shoulder popped out of socket. He still has all his arms and legs, and hopefully also both his hands, so it could be worse--

“Ed, stay with me.”

Ed tries, and it looks like Herculean effort, to raise his head to look at him.

“Oswald—” Jim says behind him; a warning as a woman emerges from behind a pillar.

Oswald saw the obituaries following Ed’s conviction. He got a good look at the love of Edward Nygma’s life; the thirty-one-year-old GCPD employee from Rhode Island who was killed in what the papers called “ _a crime of passion_.”

This woman—different hair and without the glasses, granted—is exactly the same. _Completely. Fucking. Identical._

He hears Jim mutter, aghast, “What the _fuck?_ ”

“ _Kristen Kringle_ ,” Oswald says aloud. It sounds like the name of a tall tale.

The woman grins as she points a pistol at Ed’s head. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

Ed stood Oswald up for a woman who was completely identical to a woman he murdered a year ago and didn’t have any suspicions?

 _Ed, light of my life, man of my dreams, you are one stupid motherfucker_.

“So, are you her twin, or something much worse? I mean, Gotham’s a strange place. You could be anything. We have shapeshifters, doppelgangers, clones, the works. I personally knew two people who were reanimated after being killed. No idea how tourism is still so good in this city.” He edges towards her with his hand in his coat firmly wrapped around his pistol.

Isabella cocks the gun. “Quit moving,” she says. “We’re willing to let you walk out, not a scratch on you. All you have to do is watch.”

 _Of course._ This is how they’d punish him. He gets front-row seats to watch the man he loves get tortured to death. Oswald stops walking.

Isabella clenches her jaw. “I did my research, Mr. Mayor,” she says. “You know what it’s like when someone you love is murdered.”

 _And it’s about to happen again_.

“I’m sorry,” Oswald tells her, and, God help him, he means it. For all that he hates her; for all that he intends to kill her the first chance he gets for everything she’s done, he understands. He looks at her and he knows the kind of grief, the kind of rage she’s experiencing. He knows how it feels. He knows how much she hurts and how much the need to destroy the man between them has consumed her. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, “And if he were anyone else I’d encourage you to have a go at him.” He glances at Ed, barely there, barely living, in desperate need of a hospital. “But you can’t have him.”

Isabella looks at him; she looks through him. “Because you’re in love with him?” she asks.

Oswald feels as though he’s been punched in the throat. He glances at Ed, who seems to glance back at him, or at least try, with one of his eyes swollen nearly shut. He didn’t want Ed to find out like this, and not with Gabe and Jim _fucking_ Gordon standing behind them bearing witness to this.

“At least, that’s what Butch and Tabitha seem to think. They’re here,” she adds. “They’re biding their time. They have everything they need.

“Personally I was just going to get rid of him,” she nudges the back of Ed’s skull with her pistol, and Oswald rocks on his feet to prevent himself from walking forward. “Seemed like a lot of risk and fanfare just to gloat and, to be honest, kinda needlessly cruel, but they insisted on making sure you’d see this.”

Oswald ignores her. Ed, Ed has never been this still; not during Arkham, not even in sleep. “Ed. _Ed._ Stay with me. What has four legs but can’t walk?”

He doesn’t have to wait long. Ed manages to keep eye contact with him; he’s still lucid. “ _Table_ ,” he says, or the closest thing his bleeding mouth can manage.

Oswald smiles. Why is he smiling? Ed might die soon. Ed’s not a physically tough man. He’s never been hurt like this. It’s a miracle he isn’t dead already. “Nope. A paralyzed dog.”

Ed looks as though he wants to laugh, but as he wheezes he flinches and gasps.

_They broke his ribs._

“You really are in love with him,” Isabella says. She shakes her head, disgusted.

“Don’t you know what he did to her? You know his confession? He murdered her boyfriend and took his place. He murdered her after sex.”

“Let’s work out a trade,” Oswald interrupts her. “If Butch and Tabitha are here, they’ll want to hear this.”

 Zsasz and his right hands should be here by now; they’re likely hiding somewhere in the back, biding their time. They’ve quite a score to settle with Butch, themselves. He isn’t sure where he’s going with this; he just knows he needs to bring them all out in the open and make them vulnerable to him.

 “Me for him,” he tells her. “You must hate me, too, right? I know what he did and I still broke him out of Arkham. Hurting me must appeal to you, too, right?” There’s no way Isabella will settle for him, he just needs to stall them a little longer…

  _Would_ he, though?  If it came down between them?  If it was a trade that could work?

  _Would I die for Ed?_

 Oswald shouldn't be shocked when he realizes, yes.  Yes, he would.  He's never loved anyone except his parents.  Perhaps it makes sense that he'd make the same sacrifice to match that love.  Only problem is, they don't _want_ him.

 Where the _fuck_ is Zsasz?

 Before Isabella can speak he hears Butch’s voice, sees him stroll out through the same side door with Tabitha at his side.

 “Tempting, of course,” Butch tells him, “But we have you and your boy-toy right where we want—”

 He never finishes his sentence; it coincides with a bullet blast that bursts through Butch’s forehead.

 From there all order falls apart; Tabitha and Isabella both duck for cover as another bullet barely misses Tabitha and makes impact with the wall. Oswald sees Zsasz and his henchwomen at the edge.

 “ _Candy; baby_ ,” Victor says before shooting again at Tabitha. She’s quick; she rolls and evades easily but Zsasz manages to get her in the shoulder.

 That’s when Oswald hears another shot and a scream.

 A red bloom spreads across Ed’s lower abdomen. _The bitch shot him from where she crouched behind his chair._

 Ed looks pale; someone should call 911. Maybe someone already is over the din and the ringing in his ears and his pulse beating as red as the flash behind his eyes. Oswald cocks his gun. _Screw this_. She disappears down the hallway and he notices one of Zsasz’s henchwomen point a gun in her direction. _No. That won’t do._

 “That one’s mine!” he shouts at Zsasz, at Gordon, at Gabe, at anyone who tries to get in his way. He can’t believe he’d thought about killing her just this morning when now he thinks about everything he’ll do to her now. She took Ed’s heart in her grubby fist knowing she’d destroy him later. She stole him away and now she’s _still_ trying to take Ed away from him, and she won’t win. He’ll destroy her and anyone who ever tries.

He’s never cut off anyone’s lips before. He could start there. He could carve a pair of glasses around those pretty eyes of hers.

 For once he doesn’t pay attention to Tabitha, her fight with Zsasz, as entertaining as that may be. He stops in front of Ed, first.

 “Ed. _Ed_. Stay with me,” he says. His voice shakes. He’s in much worse shape than two nights ago when he thought he’d lost him for good. He presses his hand down on the wound and looks at the blood in Ed’s mouth, at the glazed-over look in those brilliant dark eyes. “Gabe!” he calls, never looking behind him. “Keep pressure on the wound. Make sure he gets to a hospital.”

 He touches Ed’s face with his free hand. He refuses to believe he will never get the opportunity again, even as his heart clenches and tears well up in his eyes. Ed’s skin is clammy; cool to the touch. He’s barely breathing. “I can’t lose you,” he tells him. “Remember what I told you? Remember? _I’d be lost without you._ I’m a selfish bastard and I can’t live without you, so stay with me, okay?”

 Ed’s mouth twitches; he looks as though he’s trying to smile.

 Oswald takes off running the moment Gabe takes his place. He’s never run faster with his busted leg, not even when Maroni was about to kill him in a car lot. He catches a glimpse of an arm and shoots.

 She cries out, she drops her gun, and grips her wounded arm; slows down enough that Oswald can see her as she winces and picks the gun back up, holds it in a shaky grip. He’s not going to shoot her quickly and let it be done; no. He’ll make sure she suffers worse than Ed has.

 He understands her; he knows why she would do this, and he imagines he would’ve done the same in her position, but any mercy flew out the window with what she did to Ed.

 “Stop,” he says. “There’s nowhere for you to go, nowhere I can’t find you. You lost. And if Ed dies, I swear to God you’ll envy him the privilege.”

 She does stop; she turns around and looks at him with a loathing he finds all too familiar. “You know it’s what he deserves,” she tells him.

 Oswald shrugs. “Possibly. But I’m worse,” he tells her. “Which you’ll soon find out.” He cocks his gun as she manages to do the same, albeit with her left arm supporting her right.

 He figures he’ll shoot her in the kneecaps first to make sure she doesn’t try to run again.

 "GCPD! Drop your weapons!” Oswald looks behind him and sees several officers. He sees Harvey Bullock among those numbers. He’s finally trapped as mayor. Word would get out no matter what power he has to silence those who oppose him. He can’t win. He’s so close to revenge he won’t see.

 He sighs, drops his gun, and raises his arms. “Jim called ahead, I presume?” he asks.

 Bullock ignores his question in favor of arresting the woman in front of him. He’s escorted back to the front, where Jim meets Oswald’s glare with no apology.

 “Hers wasn’t your life to take,” he says.

 “Fuck you,” Oswald spits back.

 Jim has never heard him curse but his face remains impassive. “And it was necessary in order to get Ed immediate medical attention,” Jim tells him. “Although I was half-tempted to let him die.”

 “Good for you,” Oswald tells him. Butch is lying face-down and lifeless on the concrete. Gabe is speaking with an officer. Zsasz and Tabitha are long gone; perhaps he’s taken her with him as a trophy. “So you called them before we even got here?”

 “I had to. We didn’t know what we were up against or if it would be too late.”

 Oswald pushes past him to reach the ambulance; Ed’s on a stretcher. He’s breathing, his shoulder’s been popped back into place, and he’s wrapped tightly enough to stop the bleeding.

 “I’m going with him,” he tells the paramedics.

 An officer pulls him aside. “We have some questions for you back at the station,” she says.

 “That’s nice,” he replies. “I’ll answer them once I know he’ll be okay.” He nods towards Ed. “I’m not budging with this.”

 It’s fantastic what an inflated ego and high reputation can do, he thinks as he rides in the back of the ambulance; being Ed’s emergency contact helped. The paramedics are doing all they can, he knows. Oswald takes one last look into Ed’s eyes, dark and glazed over and watching him as he’s too weak to do anything else, before he’s put under.

 

............................................................

 

Edward Nygma is a very lucky man. Oswald imagines they waited until he showed up for the worst of what they’d had in store for Ed. Had he been the aggressor, it would’ve been sooner. Ed’s broken his nose in two places; it’s reset so very little looks amiss. He has a minor concussion, a dislocated shoulder and broken arm for which he’ll have to wear a sling for three weeks, and then later attempt exercises to regain the mobility in his injured shoulder and arm. He has several fractured ribs, a partially fractured collarbone, and a minor fracture in his jaw. One of his molars was knocked out completely, and another cracked. He’s suffering from internal bleeding, both as a result of his fractured ribs and of the gunshot wound.

 He was shot in the gut, barely missing his spleen.  At such close range the bullet went through him. He would’ve bled to death if help had come even minutes later; he has to go in for emergency surgery to have everything stitched up after the bile was drained and the wound embolized. He’ll be unconscious for at least a full day and in the hospital for several more.

 However, after all this, Ed’s going to survive. In the end he’ll have scars and a missing molar, but otherwise all wounds will heal, so yes. Ed is a very lucky man.

 That doesn’t change the twisting in Oswald’s gut as he sees Ed lay prone and drugged in the hospital bed after his bones have been reset. Oswald has a spare of Ed’s glasses on the bedside table and ordered another spare just in case. He accepts a Styrofoam cup of some of the shittiest coffee he’s had in years, listens, and watches.

 He finds it remarkable that for many people the world would have gone on turning if Ed had died.

 Oswald has to leave once he knows Ed is out of critical condition. He’ll come back as soon as he can. For now he has to talk to the people who once worked with and still loathe Ed.

 

 .......................................................................

 

He offers his most perfunctory answers back at the station. He tells them that he’d heard Ed was going on a date that evening with a woman he’d met buying wine, how he’d seen the note and heard about the possibility of foul play, how he’d been convinced that Butch would hurt Ed somehow, but hadn’t realized he’d been working with an outside party.

 “Had you met her prior to this evening?”

 “I had not. I would’ve had quite a few questions had I known more about her.”

 “So you’re aware of her relationship to Kristen Kringle?”

 “She told me when I met her, yes. And I saw the obituary in the papers after Ed’s arrest, and knew when I first saw her the resemblance was too strong to be coincidental.” “

 And you don’t think Mr. Nygma had intended foul play from the start?”

 “No.”

 Bullock raises his eyebrows. “Seriously?” he asks.

 Oswald doesn’t bat an eyelash. “I’m aware of Edward Nygma’s crimes. No one spends almost nine months in Arkham for a DUI. I’m aware of his faults and his neuroses, and would not have brought him on as part of my staff if I didn’t think I could handle him. I also believe he genuinely feels remorse for killing Miss Kringle. When he told me he was going on a date with her I never sensed any objective on his part except getting laid.”

 Bullock winces. “Thanks for the image.”

 “Happy to help,” Oswald replies. The idea doesn’t appeal to him all that much, either. “Whatever you feel about him, and whatever his previous crimes were, I think he’s innocent of whatever hypothetical crimes you would like to pin on him now. The only reason I can see him singling out someone identical to his former girlfriend would be guilty conscience.”

 “And you think he’d do the same for the other innocent people he killed?” Bullock says.

 “No,” Oswald tells him. “Just her.”

 Bullock at the very least does believe this. Still, he adds, “You have any idea how many people here would’ve liked to see him dead?”

 Oswald meets his gaze cold and calm as he replies, “It’s a good thing he has me on his side, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...canon is essentially skull-fucked at this point. There is one last behemoth of a chapter coming up. I am not done with my smol birb filled with rage and my tol murder noodle.
> 
> I went with one of my original ideas for who Isabella might be when I heard about 3.06, and, while it's not as cool as some of the other theories surrounding her character, I'm not done with her yet, and I'm kind of sad that they cast an actress with multiple certifications in stage combat to not do a single fight scene. As it stands, my badass vengeful bb hasn't finished telling her story.
> 
> Mudak=the anglicized form of the Russian word for "asshole."
> 
> Final words: I get that this isn't realistic; it's silly and campy and strays from normalcy, but I figure part of comic book lore appeal is camp, so here we are.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...in the spirit of so much I like going down the toilet, I'm putting up the new chapter--it's campy, it's cliched out the ass, and it's far too happy for the grimdark of Gotham's canon, but fuck it.
> 
>  
> 
> "But it will never be enough, because, in the end, vengeance is mind." -Jessica Lange, on Titus Andronicus

…………………………………………

Oswald still has mayoral duties, and starts off the morning after the remainders of a sleepless night with a press statement offering as limited information, he tries to suggest as much as possible.  He finishes his statement with a reminder for citizens to look out for one another and do their part to keep one another safe.  He finds later that public response had been positive, which is good because he honestly wasn’t thinking of anything but Ed recovering from surgery the entire time he spoke.  He returns to the manor and brings a bottle of wine (and a glass, to feel a little more dignified) to the master bathroom and bathes until the water runs cool and he’s simply resting his aching leg underwater.  He left the GCPD somewhat enlightened; Kristen Kringle’s sister did turn out to be interesting.  Had she been on the opposite side of the conflict she may have been a good underling.  He managed to score a copy of her statement, and that’s yet another goldmine.

Ed is alive; his chances of surviving the surgery are excellent; Butch is dead; Isabella’s been locked up.  Everything’s okay for now.  He should enjoy that while it lasts, since it never does. 

He orders a flower arrangement from the shop first thing afterwards and as soon as he hears the outcome of the operation—a success

_Ed’s alive_

_Ed’s gonna make it_

And has it sent to his room; Ed will still be out for several hours, and there’s no end to the press, the delegating responsibilities to several assistants and an intern all trying to juggle work Ed mastered single-handedly. 

He tries to get work done, sits at his desk as his leg throbs and he runs off the last traces of wine and alternating coffee and tea.  He can’t sleep, can’t fathom the idea.  What if something happens?  What if he gets a call—Ed survived the operation but had a sudden aneurysm or heart-attack in bed?  He barks orders at everyone, can’t meet Gabe and Olga’s sympathetic glances they send his way.  When the time comes Ed’s estimated to wake up, he’s all but ready to leap into the car and tail it to the hospital, traffic be damned.

He heads to the hospital with several books while he waits for Ed to wake up.  Oswald doesn’t understand how he looks so beautiful after all that’s happened to him.  He doesn’t understand how so much could happen in two nights.

When Ed comes to, he glances at Oswald and offers the closest thing to a smile he can give, considering.

“You keep saving me,” he says.  He does in fact sound sedated but he is out of the woods.

“You keep getting into trouble,” Oswald replies.  He said it as a joke but realizes from the way Ed averts his gaze he may have said the wrong thing, and tries his best to remedy the fact.  “You’ve been through a lot.”

Ed fades in and out through the visit; Oswald asked his assistant to clear his schedule for the following day; there’s nothing so important that it can’t wait a moment, the lifetimes it takes to make sure Ed’s okay.

He reads without digesting a single word; he talks in hushed tones with the doctors and nurses that circulate about Ed’s condition (excellent.  He took a hell of a beating but he’s a healthy twenty-nine year-old man and he’ll be fine) to the length of his stay (four more days) to physical therapy (small amounts necessary after the sling and cast come off) to anything he can do (just be there and be patient.)  Ed fades in and out of consciousness, of lucidity.  At one point he glances over at Oswald and offers what looks to him like the most sensual, sinful smile ever directed at him.

“I go in hard, I come out soft.  You blow me hard.  What am I?”

Oswald chokes on the tea an orderly gave him.  After a few seconds of sputtering he says, “I’m sure there’s another answer, but good God, man.  Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Ed laughs, then hisses at the stress it puts on his ribs.  “Bubblegum,” he says, finally. 

It takes Oswald a few seconds to collect himself and laugh as well.  “You’re bad,” he says.  _Don’t play me like this_ , he thinks.  _You must have heard what they said_.  _If we’re friends don’t tease me about it, for the love of God_.

………………………………..

“Butch is dead.  Finally.”  Oswald grins at Ed’s soft laugh.  “Thought you might like that.  Tabitha was shot, but there’s no body and no Zsasz, so I’m not sure what that bodes for either of them.”  Oswald tries to gauge Ed’s reaction.  He doesn’t know if he still feels responsible for Isabella, if he’s still a little in love with what she could have been.  If he’s still in love with Miss Kringle.  “Isabella’s in police custody.”

Ed furrows his brow and glances drowsily at Oswald.  “Really thought you were gonna kill her,” he says.

Oswald considers this; Ed says it without any sort of accusation, but then he seems a bit too out of it to show any real emotion.  “The thought occurred to me,” he admits.  “Jim stopped me.  Or more accurately, he called the cops before we got there.  On the plus side, you got medical attention that much quicker so,” he shrugs.  “You lose some, you win some.  I’d rather have you alive than her dead, if it ever came to that.”

Maybe Ed will resent him for that; so much of what Isabella must have meant to Ed from the first moment he saw her revolved around a completely innocent woman.  Maybe if Oswald had killed her, in spite of everything she’d done, Ed would only have seen his long-dead lover.

They don’t have to mention it then, as an orderly comes in with a flower arrangement from the GCPD, of all places.  It’s an artful setup, and complete with a card.

Ed grins sleepily at the announcement.  “What does it say?”

Oswald looks at the inside of the card and laughs.  “‘Nygma, you can still eat my entire ass; signed, Harvey Bullock and the rest of the GCPD. ‘”

Ed laughs with him.  He doesn’t say what Oswald fears most, the inevitable rejection.  He doesn’t mention any of the exchanges or implications from that night.  Could be politeness, Oswald supposes.  Ed doesn’t want to reward Oswald saving his life by turning him down just yet.  If Ed stays closed-lipped about it, so will Oswald.

_you’re in love with him_

_your boy-toy_

He wonders how much any of this offends Ed; probably, hopefully, not enough to cost Oswald their friendship.  At this point, as long as Ed stays his friend Oswald can live with it never progressing further.

 _You don’t have to love me back_ , he thinks as he looks at Ed.  _Just don’t leave_.

……………………………..

The GCPD are also perfunctory with their investigation; they don’t wait for Ed to heal, for him to be released from the hospital, but interview him in the room like paparazzi, like _savages_.

“I’m not leaving this room,” Oswald says.  Barnes, looking worse than ever, twitches and glares, nostrils flaring.  Oswald doesn’t care; if he was intimidated by every man larger than he, he would never get up in the morning.  “I know how you feel about him; I want to make sure the investigation is impartial and safe.”

He feels Ed watch him and pushes down the urge to reach out and take Ed’s good hand, to offer some physical reassurance as he refuses to back down from Barnes’s sharp gaze.

Barnes finally focuses his attention on Ed, who’s still not completely lucid, but enough in the clear to speak coherently as Barnes is, quite frankly, rude and accusatory as hell—unprofessional even by GCPD standards, but seems to have the wherewithal not to physically engage a recently-shot man lying in a hospital bed.  Ed can’t seem to summon up the energy to be offended, but Oswald is, and he grinds his teeth as Barnes asks, “And what exactly were your intentions when you took her out for the evening?”

Ed shrugs one shoulder.  “What I imagine every man’s intention is when going out with a beautiful woman,” he replies.

Oswald winces.  He’s sure they never slept together; Isabella would’ve knocked Ed out cold before he could get the chance, but the idea makes him uncomfortable all the same.

Ed falls back to sleep when Barnes finally, thankfully leaves; Oswald wants to take his hand, brush the hair back from his pale brow, but refrains.  There’s so much doubt, so many questions, and he doesn’t know when would be the right time to ask.

………………………………..

They had seemed convinced that Oswald’s in love with him; Oswald has done nothing to deny the accusation. 

When he wakes up and sees Oswald at his bedside he thinks of how easily he could have avoided all of this had he just told Oswald how he felt when he had the chance.  It may have been a different outcome still had he simply not gone to that wine store at that time. 

He thinks about fate; he thought fate had brought Kristen into his life, then later, Oswald.  He had thought Isabella could be many things, but had held out such blind, childish hope that she was fate’s way of giving him a second chance at love.  Now he thinks none of it really means anything.  Everything he’d felt for Kristen, the significance of it and what it could’ve meant for him and Isabella, turns out to have had no point.   He remembers Oswald’s opinion on fate, that it’s a load of horseshit and the universe has never been stable enough to hold to a long-term plan for anyone.  At the moment he’s inclined to agree.  Unless all of this was a punishment for his sins, he doesn’t see what the point was in any of this.

“In case she told you her last name,” Oswald says after a moment, “There’s a reason it’s ‘Flynn’ and not ‘Kringle.’  She was married for three years, and later kept her husband’s name after the divorce.”

Ed isn’t sure he wants to hear any of this.  He still wants to hear Oswald’s voice, though, so he says nothing.

“She joined the military out of high school, served in the Marine Corps until the age of twenty-four, then used her GI Bill to pay for college.  Admittedly,” Oswald shrugs, “Impressive.  A shame she turned out to be a problem.  You remember she was the only one in that trio who knew getting me involved was a bad idea?  Didn’t even know me and she knew me better than they did.”

“You must think I’m insane,” Ed says.  He’d be right to think it, of course.  Anyone would.  He’d walked into the lion’s den in the hopes that he’d find a banquet.  He didn’t think it through, didn’t think much at all.  Suspicion, guilt, curiosity, longing, lust all wrapped up in one when he pursued a woman who nearly killed him and kept it from a man who’d shown he’d go to any lengths to protect him.

Oswald looks at Ed and it’s so tender Ed wonders why he had such doubts.  “I think you do very dangerous things for the sake of love,” Oswald says.

 _You have no idea_ , Ed thinks.

There’s something so tangible, so terrifying, in the air between them.  It’ll get worse as the meds continue to wear off, when Oswald comes back again as visiting hours end.  He can’t say the words even now.  This isn’t the time, this isn’t the place.  He wants to be alone with Oswald in the safety of his manor when they talk about it, not in a hospital room.

Oswald stays a little while after visiting hours, glares at the attending nurse when she reminds him of the time.

“It’s fine,” Ed tells him.  “You need your rest, too.  Your other obligations.  I’ll still be here in the morning.”  He’s starting to feel better, more lucid.

Oswald turns to look at him.  He looks as though he wants to grab Ed’s good hand, reaches for it, and hesitates.

 _Never be afraid of touching me_ , Ed thinks, but Oswald sighs and gets up.

“I’ll leave these with you,” Oswald tells him, and sets the books on his bedside.  _The World of Ancient Scythia_ ; _Germs, Guns, and Automobiles_ ; _History of the World in Six Glasses_ ; _History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Part One_.  “I imagine you’ve likely read at least one of them, but something to keep you occupied.

“Is there anything I can bring tomorrow?” he asks.

 _Just you_ , Ed thinks.  “I imagine I’ll be in good enough shape to do some work from here,” he says.

Oswald’s already shaking his head, bemused.  “You need to _heal_ ,” he says.  “That’s why you’re here.”

“I insist,” Ed tells him.  He manages a smile, even as it hurts his jaw.  “I’ll still be healing; I’ll just be skimming paperwork while I do it.  It’ll keep me _occupied_ , as you say.”

Oswald nods; a stiff jerk of his head.  “Good night,” he says, and turns to go before stopping again.  He’s a small man, sometimes a giant in his own right, but now he looks fragile, looks every bit the lovely, dark night-bird Ed so desperately wants.  “Ed, I…”

He looks down.  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he says.  This time, Ed is certain he knows what he means.  His heart swells; they really are a twisted pair, one that kills together, fights together, and don’t know how to express love.  Somehow he still can’t imagine being a better match for anyone else.

“Me, too,” he says.

…………………………..

There are loose ends, mainly the vile, awful woman who might be alive, might be on the run, and when he can’t reach Zasz, he does the next best thing.

He pays a visit to Barbara.

“There he is, the prodigal son returns,” she says, already tipsy at one-thirty in the afternoon yet lovely as ever.  “I’m guessing you’re here for Tabby.”

Oswald raises his eyebrows.  “Of course not.  I’m here for a Greenhat martini, neat, no olives,” he replies.  “She here?”

Barbara plucks an olive from her own drink—for such a trim, healthy-looking woman, it appears she runs on alcohol, like they’re constantly-dying batteries—and pops it in her mouth.  “What’s left of her.  Zsasz dropped her off at my doorstep; probably thought about programming her like he did with Butch, may he rest in shit.”

“I don’t want her.”

“Yeah, he probably knows, which is why he didn’t.”  Barbara turns to him, suddenly earnest, suddenly sober.  “I have a proposition for you,” she tells him.  “A peace offering, a deal, an olive branch, whatever the fuck you want to call it.

“Agree not to kill or have her killed, you and your boyfriend get shares in The Sirens and every bar we open afterwards.”

Oswald snorts.  “Tempting I guess, but, first of all, inaccurate.  Ed is not, nor has he ever been, my boyfriend.  Second, what makes you think either of us would want shares?  What makes you think a little pocket money is enough to spare a woman who _stabbed my mother in the back_ and later tried to help beat a man to death, a man she thinks she’ll placate with _shares_ in a _bar_?”

Barbara blinks at him from where she perches on her stool.  “Drink?” she says finally.

“I’m good.  So, again, what makes you think your offer means anything to me?”

“You want revenge?  You have it.  In spades.  You killed her brother—twice—a man that landed her in the hospital and had, by the way, forced her to kill your mother.  It was a matter of Tabby’s life or your mother’s, and if she’d failed, your mother would’ve died anyway—”

“I don’t _fucking_ care.”

“Yeah, I know.  Still one dead mom.  At least you loved yours.”  Barbara takes a gulp from her dwindling martini, and reaches over for the nearest open wine bottle, uncorks it and pours the contents into her martini glass.  “Anyway, a man who protected her from you is also dead.”

“Did she love him?”  Oswald can’t imagine how.  He never understood how she could reciprocate Butch’s interest; Tabitha is, much as Oswald is loathe to admit, one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen in addition to being a lethal, vile bitch.  Butch is… _was_ …not much more than a circus strongman. 

Barbara considers this, and tops off her glass.  “I don’t know; neither did she, so I guess that means _no_.  All that aside, one of the last people she liked and trusted is dead.  And Zsasz didn’t just kill Butch, he left Tabby in _very_ bad shape.”  Barbara takes another gulp from her glass.  Again, she seems far more serious than Oswald has seen her in ages.  Perhaps this is who she is when she’s not blackout drunk or exhilarated from violent escapades or coke.

“Barely recognized her when Zsasz delivered her to me.  First person to ever get the upper hand on her, which is terrifying.  Also, unlike your not-boyfriend, she can’t go to a hospital, so she can’t get the care she needs.  I’m all she has left.”

“Well doesn’t that tug at my heartstrings,” Oswald snaps.  Thing is, he doesn’t hate Barbara.  He might actually like her, at least sometimes, but it’s not enough that he wouldn’t be willing to hurt her if he must. 

“I figured you’d say that,” Barbara says.  “And while I wanted to be diplomatic, if you aren’t willing to do the same, I will say here and now that if you hurt her further, or kill her,” she shakes her head, a wide grin stretching across her face, “Hoo, boy _.  Such_ trouble I will cause for you.”

 _Threatened by a skinny boozehound.  Terrifying_.  “And you know how I’ll retaliate,” he responds.

Barbara shrugs.  “Hence the offering you an ‘out.’  Sirens is doing _very_ well, and we’re in the process of opening another club.  _Pandora’s Box_ —a, shall you say, _kink_ club that’s geared mostly towards the LGBT community.”  She glances at Oswald’s unmoved look.  “You understand what I’m offering you isn’t just a partnership, a share in stocks and revenue.  I’m offering you a share in employees, in people with their ears to the ground.  Every connection and trade we have, you’ll have, too.  You’ll know what we know, have the assets we have.”  Barbara grins and tilts her head.  “Wouldn’t it be nice to corner that last bit of Gotham outside your jurisdiction?” she asks.

It _would_. 

“How do I know Tabitha isn’t perfectly fine and isn’t about to jump out of the cupboards to stab me in the back, too?” he asks.  As to the former, he has his doubts that she’s _perfectly fine_ after Zsasz got ahold of her.  As for the latter…even if he and Tabitha found a common enemy in her brother and whatever it was he became, they will always despise each other.  At least, he’ll always despise her; forced on threat of her life or no, Tabitha killed his mother.  He’ll never forgive her, whatever her circumstances were.  And he’ll never believe Tabitha as anything other than a spiteful snake, ready to lash out at anyone.

Barbara sighs and gets to her feet; she remains steady even in five-inch heels that resemble ice picks, Oswald notices.  “Let me show you something,” she says, and Oswald follows, hand on the pistol in his overcoat.

 

There’s a pile of flesh-colored meat lying in what Oswald guesses is the guest bedroom and lays surrounded by makeshift supplies and a pretty brunette he vaguely recognizes as a bartender at Sirens.

“She’s also a medical intern; on probation for stealing supplies,” Barbara mutters.  “Closest thing we had to an actual doctor.”

Barbara wasn’t kidding; Tabitha is almost unrecognizable, and if the gashes across her face indicate, her beauty will never be the same, to say nothing of her organs, her bones, whatever damage Oswald can’t see under gauze, wraps, blankets.  She’s unconscious, and appears to be breathing but it’s so shallow Oswald feels he’s looking at a poorly-wrapped mummy.

“Well, I imagine if anyone can still look pretty with a Glasgow smile, it’s her,” Oswald says, trying not to sound too elated.  If Barbara wanted to elicit pity, she came to the wrong man.  His grip tightens on the barrel of his pistol as he considers finishing the job; thankfully the safety’s on.

“You think she’d honor the agreement?” he adds.

“She’ll have to.  I don’t know how long it will take her to recover, or how fully she can, but at this point there’s little else to do but reach some kind of impasse.

“She won’t be coming after you anytime soon, in any case” Barbara says. 

Oswald watches the damage Zsasz inflicted.  “I’ll only say this once, and I don’t care how you interpret it, or if you’re still under the misguided impression that he and I are an item,” he says, staring straight ahead. “If Ed had died, I’d put a bullet through her, you, and anyone else who might bear witness.”

“I believe you.”  Barbara looks at him; she’s sly, underhanded, unstable.  Part of why he might like her, he supposes.  They have their similarities.  “And she has come to mean as much to me as he does to you.  Dating or not, if you kill her, your power won’t save you.  I will tear down your empire, kill your friend,  and make sure the last thing you ever see will be my smirking face as I beat you to death with a tire iron.”

Oswald looks back.  She means it.  “I still won’t agree until Ed does,” he tells her.  “He’s the one who got hurt just as badly as this one,” he nods at Tabitha, out cold, clinging to life.  “If he’s out, so am I.”

Barbara says nothing for a moment, just steps over to Tabitha’s side and brushes her fingertips against the side of Tabitha’s face.  She doesn’t look back at him as she says, “Keep me posted.  And consider my offer.”

…………………………………………….

When Oswald comes back—day three, and Ed is downright bored with the hospital, called his intern to bring him paperwork for him to fill out, and is writing as though the upper half of the left side of his body hasn’t been brutalized—his heart is stuck in his throat. 

Ed is better.  Ed is somewhat lucid; he has to take painkillers at the press of a button attached to his IV every few hours, but he’s lucid, and Ed is sharper and quicker on the uptake no matter his state of inebriation than nearly anyone Oswald has ever met.

Oswald sighs when he sees the forms Ed signs, his writing hand thankfully spared, and nearly drops the extra flowers to add to his arrangement.

Ed glances up and grins; no one will notice his missing molar, and, as it stands, nothing could lessen his beautiful smile.  “I told you I wanted to keep myself occupied.  Don’t take it out on Molly. I insisted.  I said you wanted me to work.”

Oswald groans.  “You really convinced her I forced you to work while in the hospital?” he asks.

Ed shrugs his one good shoulder, smile never disappearing as it fades into a lopsided smirk.  His glasses are on, his hair falling into natural loose waves.  Were it not for the hospital gown, Oswald could swear he’d seen that same image a week ago.  “You’re passionate about your job.  Plus, she kind of has to do what I say.”

Oswald snorts.  “I imagine she does,” he says, and wonders if Ed knows his intern has a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him.  Probably not.  For such a smart man, he’s often slow on the uptake.  “Quick update: Tabitha’s alive.  Zsasz left her with Barbara a few hours ago not far from it.”

“Like a cat leaving a dying mouse as a present?” Ed says.  His face tightens even as he jokes.  Oswald knows the tell—Ed enunciates more when he’s excited, and when he’s angry.  “Not just present a dead one?  He has no qualms about taking lives.”

“I could not agree more.  Hardly professional for an assassin to not finish the job.”  Oswald thinks of Tabitha, brutalized and barely clinging to life; maybe Zsasz thought it would be funny to see Barbara have Tabitha die in her arms as she scrambled to find a way to save her.  Thank God for medical interns/bartenders with sticky hands.  “And when he makes himself available again, I’ll let him know your complaints.”

Ed clenches his injured jaw, then winces at the pressure.  His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows hard, trying to collect himself.  “So what did Barbara have to say?” he asks.

“Not-so-thinly veiled threats, misconceptions, and what she sees as an olive branch,” Oswald replies.  “To extend to us both.  I told her I’d talk to you first.”

“An olive branch?” Ed repeats.  “What could she possibly offer you?”

“Both of us, as an apology,” Oswald corrects.  “And, for what it’s worth, Tabitha’s in bad shape, plus, since, you know, wanted criminal and all that, she can’t go to a hospital.  She’s doing worse than you are.”

“That does make me feel a little better,” Ed says, voice dry.

“Barbara’s offering us whatever power she has left.  She’s offering us shares in her bar and any establishment she owns afterwards, as well as her employees, her deals, her connections.  Everything she and Tabitha have left.  Provided I—we--don’t try to exact further revenge on Tabitha, let her live and heal and let Barbara look after her.”  Oswald considers this for a second, and before Ed can interject, adds, “I’m assuming she’s holding you to that offer by extension, but it would be a hell of a loophole if she didn't, would it not?”

Ed exhales hard through his nose.  He drums his fingers on the table beside him.  After a moment, he says, “And what did you tell her?”

Oswald doesn’t bother to choose his words carefully; Ed deserves to know every aspect of his feelings on this.  “I told her I wouldn’t promise a thing until I knew what you wanted.  She and I have a history and I like her well enough, but if I thought she’d hurt you, I’d put a bullet through her head.”  Ed almost smiles at that.  Sometimes Oswald remembers how little people seemed to care about him for much of his life, and as he remembers now, he wonders if that’s part of why he feels so compatible with him.

“You think she’s a threat?”

“I think in some ways, she could be.  But I can take her.”

“And Tabitha?”

This time Oswald does consider his words.  “Galavan orchestrated it; imprisoning my mother, killing her, she was his weapon.  He probably would’ve killed my mother if she’d hesitated, and then his own sister.  Even after I offered myself.”

“You offered your life for hers?” Ed interrupts.  He leans up on his working elbow, eyes wider than before. 

Oswald furrows his brow.  What kind of question is that?  What kind of doubt?  “Of course.  I’d have died for her.  I’d die for the people I love.”

Ed swallows hard, and Oswald immediately realizes his mistake.  He offered to die for Ed—and if it ever came to it, he would—but he doesn’t want to open this can of worms with him, not now, not when they’re getting along so well.

The moment Ed opens his mouth Oswald pushes forward as he takes several mental steps back.  “So yes, her own life hinged on taking my mother’s.  I can see that now.  But it doesn’t change anything.  She still killed my mother, an innocent woman who had never committed a crime, had never hurt anyone, had nothing to do with my success except be my rock.  She still stabbed a sixty-one-year-old woman in the back after keeping her hostage.  I’ll never forgive her for that. 

“The big manly man she trusted to protect her—as if she needed it—is dead.  And she and Barbara depend on our mercy.  Not just mine.”

Ed tilts his head.  “So what do you want?” he asks.

Oswald sits, leans his elbows on his thighs and leans forward.  “It doesn’t really matter.  All this, this peace offering, is after what they did to you.  And if they’d…” it’s tougher saying it out loud when Ed is vulnerable in a ghastly hospital bed, an IV in the crook of his arm and his face still mottled with bruises, “if they’d succeeded, they also would’ve been dead before sunrise.  I can promise you that.”

He doesn’t understand the look in Ed’s eyes, his face softer, as he replies, “I believe you.”

Oswald looks down.  “The extra clout helps.  The more surface area I have in Gotham, the more nooks and crannies, the more eyes and ears, the better.  And there is a certain power in Tabitha having to cede hers to two people she hates.”  He glances back up at Ed’s face; his brow his furrowed, his spare glasses rest on the bridge of his reset nose (it looks slightly crooked upon closer inspection, but it isn’t conspicuous) and listens doubtfully.  “I’m just listing the pros.  They’re opening another, more, well, _sexy_ club.  It’s LGBT friendly, which is fine, since it’s the _sexy_ part that has me worrying…”

“Really?” Ed expression brightens.  “That’s nice of them.  A safe spot for the LGBT community to be open with their orientations and not feel judged.  Did I ever tell you I’ve identified as bisexual the moment I was out of my parents’s house?”

Oswald’s mind goes blank for a moment.  So…Ed isn’t…he’s not _exclusively_ attracted to women.  There is, or maybe there could have been, the possibility that…

He brushes past it.  “You did not,” he replies, voice sounding even.  “So, thoughts?”

At the end of Oswald’s visit they come to an agreement: they’ll accept the offer—all shares are to be made private, not to be revealed to the public.  The mayor owning shares in what Barbara calls a “kink club” and a bar belonging to one of his Chief of Staff’s assailants won’t look good.  And the moment one or both of them rescinds on the offer, the moment Tabitha makes a threatening move towards either of them, the moment they hear of a breach of confidence, both women are gone.

An orderly comes in partway and they change the subject, talk about the book Ed has already finished—of course he would—until he leaves.

Then Ed grins sleepily at him—he needs his rest, needs painkillers, needs to go back to sleep, and Oswald’s being cruel depriving him of his rest—and says, “So, any thoughts on knowing that detail about me?  Does that change…”

Oswald immediately leans forward and takes Ed’s hand in both of his.  He’s terrified.  Ed seemed lucid, seemed coherent enough that his word and agreement were solid, but the way Ed smiles at their joined hands has him wondering otherwise.  The fact that Ed wants to talk about it, when Oswald can’t.  The end of time is good for him.  He’s just not lovable—his parents loved him, but that was because he was their flesh and blood.  “Not at all.  And…” he glances at Ed’s tired face, all he’s seen, all he’s endured, all he’s still trying to entertain Oswald.  “Ed, it can wait.  All this can wait until you’re out of the hospital, until you’re off painkillers.  Hell, the truce can wait until you’re off painkillers and know what you’re saying.”

Ed pouts— _God_ , he looks so young—and says, “I _do_ know what I’m saying, thank you very much.”

“And it can wait until you’re out of the hospital.”  Oswald squeezes Ed’s hand.  For a moment he doesn’t mind if this is all the affection he ever gets.  If he never knows how it would feel to have Ed’s lips on his.  “We have time.  You’ll heal, you’ll make a full recovery, and we’ll be back to ruling Gotham together.”

“ _You_ rule Gotham,” Ed says, petulant.  It’s almost kind of cute.  _Very_ cute, really.  It’s also not entirely true.

Oswald shakes his head.  “Chief of Staff is a title.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s the two of us, together.”

Ed’s lips part; he gasps, dark eyes wide and near-glittering, before, now speechless, he squeezes back.

…………………………………………………….

Ed’s discharged four days after surgery, as promised.  Oswald brings him pajama pants and tee-shirts to replace the embarrassing hospital gowns as he regains more and more mobility, and he’s wearing them when he’s discharged and he’s mostly off painkillers.  In fact, he’s completely lucid by the time he gets to his room after it’s been set up to accommodate him.

He sprawls out on the bed, long limbs all akimbo, and sets his glasses on the nightstand to the left of him.  Oswald doesn’t understand how he’s still attracted to him after seeing him get hurt so badly.  He doesn’t understand why Ed hasn’t mentioned Oswald’s attraction even now.  He doesn’t know what the hell to do with the unspoken words between them. 

“Oswald,” Ed murmurs.  His jaw still must hurt even after everything’s been reset.  At least he doesn’t need it wired shut.  Oswald can’t imagine Ed losing the ability to talk.

“Yes?”

“ _Stay with me_.”

Ed doesn’t know what he’s asking.  Oswald looks around him at the nonexistent couch and spare bed, sighs, and sits on the loveseat closest to Ed’s bed.  He wants to hold onto Ed even as it hurts him; he wants to kiss cracked lips; he wants a broken body to cover his own.

He glances up.  Ed pats the space to his right with his good hand.

“You know what I mean,” Ed tells him.  “ _Please._ ”

Lying with Ed through the night, even knowing nothing will happen, even knowing Ed would never force him into anything he can’t handle, even knowing he doesn’t even want everything now he may consider later, this is going to be hell for Oswald.

Oswald stays.

He sits on the edge of the bed and takes off his shoes and his jacket.  He loosens his collar, tie, and cuffs.  He lays down beside the man he loves, the man who almost died—twice--mere days ago, and waits.

“Oswald?” 

“Yes?”

Ed tilts his head to look at him.  Oswald can’t look back yet.

“You love me.”

Oswald shuts his eyes.  He takes several deep breaths.  He imagines the looks of shock, of revulsion, of pity; none match the tenderness in Ed’s voice.  Finally, he looks over.  Ed’s eyes glint and he has a look Oswald has seen on him before but still cannot understand.  Perhaps he was never meant to.

“Yes,” he says, finally, terrified, vulnerable, open and ready to be cut up for the slaughter.

Ed furrows his brow; he casts his gaze over Oswald’s slight frame and his face, which he tries his best to keep composed.  Oswald looks back at the ceiling.

 _Say something_ , Oswald thinks.  _For God’s sake, don’t just look at me like a computer scanner.  Tell me what you’re thinking_.

Finally, Ed speaks.  It’s that soft, sensual voice that breaks Oswald out of his reverie.  “ _Useless to one_ ,” he says.

Oswald could swear he heard wrong.  His hearing has never failed him before, but this has to be a mistake.  If it isn’t, his heart may give out a good thirty years before genetics would predict.  If neither is the case, though, if there’s a chance…  “ _Priceless to two_ ,” he finishes.  He looks back over at Ed, at the gorgeous, injured face and the dark eyes that have held him captive from the moment they met; since before he fell for him, since before he thought they’d ever meet again.  He senses Ed extend his right arm towards him and touch his cheek—slow, tender; not the slaps, the punches, the condescending pats Maroni and Falcone would give him in mock-play, smirking at his every flinch.  Ed reaches out, fingertips gliding _so soft_ over his skin.

Oswald’s never kissed a man before.  He’s never kissed _anyone_ , even as he’s imagined kissing Ed.

It’s gentle; the brushing of sensitive skin; the meeting of breath as Oswald gasps slightly against Ed’s soft mouth.  He feels Ed collect his bottom lip between his own, feels those same lips travel to the corner of his mouth, and whimpers even as the lack of control has him feeling powerless.  Perhaps it’s that same feeling that draws him in.  He wants to feel what else Ed can do to him; how much he can stimulate every sense.  He’ll give himself over again and again if he finds out more about him.

It doesn’t last long, of course.  Ed is injured, after all, and still regaining his strength after days spent doped up in a hospital bed.  Still he sleeps with his head against the crux of Oswald’s neck; with his good arm wrapped around the smaller mans’ waist; and they fall fully-clothed asleep like old lovers.

……………………..

In the morning Oswald is still there; overnight they’ve managed to find their way onto their sides; Oswald’s feathered hair tickles Ed’s chin; one of Ed’s legs has found its way between Oswald’s.  Ed’s long-limbed body and Oswald’s small, pointy one shouldn’t fit so well, but they do.  Few things feel as natural as waking up with Oswald’s back against his stomach, only Ed’s sling keeping them from slotting against one another completely, and their breathing synchronized.  Still, as Oswald stirs and wakes almost immediately after, Ed realizes this is probably not the best moment for him to have morning wood that brushes against the cleft of Oswald’s ass.

He pulls his lower body away the moment he hears Oswald’s sharp intake of breath.  He figures he’ll take the moment to put on his glasses while figuring out how to apologize as tactfully as he can for his erection if it offends Oswald.                                                                                                                                                                                         

“Morning,” he tells him.  Oswald murmurs an assent and turns to face him.  Ed likes seeing him disheveled first thing in the morning, his hair mussed and features softened after sleep.  Oswald tilts his head at him as he rests on his elbow and says nothing for a few moments.  Instead he studies Ed’s features with an analytical air. 

 “What?” Ed asks, unnerved.  He isn’t used to anyone, least of all Oswald, looking at him like this.

“You’re actually attracted to me,” Oswald answers.  He furrows his brow; he looks more confused than Ed has ever seen him.  He looks at him as though he’s a puzzle he cannot solve.  Ed wonders why such a simple idea would vex Oswald so much.  There had to have been others Oswald rejected.

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Ed asks him.

Oswald shakes his head.  “No one’s ever wanted me before,” he says.

“That can’t be right,” Ed tells him.  Oswald has power and intellect, and while he’s not the most conventionally good-looking man in Gotham, there are far less attractive people than he with hopeful would-be lovers. 

Oswald glances down.  “My former stepsister made a move on me once, but that was to disgrace me, not out of interest.  I think she was hoping I’d take the bait so she could get me kicked out.”   

 _Then I’m glad you killed her_ , Ed thinks.  He imagines the pair of siblings, Little Lord Fauntleroy’s resenting Oswald’s existence and doing all they can to extinguish it, and wishes he could have been there to see their demise.  He finds he hates the idea of some sniveling rich girl trying to seduce someone she could never appreciate or understand.

Oswald glances back up.  “Otherwise?  Nothing.  Never even kissed anyone before you.”  When he sees Ed’s expression, he adds with a sheepish grin, “In case you didn’t feel smug about all this.”

Ed laughs a little.  It’s remarkable to him, and yet it makes a certain kind of sense.  If someone’s gone over thirty years without someone expressing an interest in him, how would he pick up on hints or believe someone wants him?  Would Oswald be perceptive in that case?  Would he have believed Ed at first if he’d simply told him?

“Why are you attracted to me?” Oswald asks.  His eyes are very wide.  Ed finds it odd that such an impeccably dressed man with an ego to rival Napoleon’s could have such self-doubt.  Everything Oswald might feel makes him unworthy of love, unworthy of appreciation, Ed likes.  Oswald is in no danger of being a traditionally handsome man, but in many ways that’s what Ed enjoys in the first place.   It suits him; his strange, unorthodox attractiveness.

Ed leans in, gives Oswald enough time to say no, to pull away, and kisses him; he can’t dominate the kiss the way he’d like just yet.  He does still want to be dominant with Oswald at some point, but for now he lets Oswald adjust to the feeling of someone’s mouth against his own.  He flicks his tongue against Oswald’s bottom lip and sucks briefly there.  He hears Oswald give a soft whine that goes straight to his cock and deepens the kiss as best as circumstances will allow; he feels Oswald cup the side of his face, slide his thumb over old bruises.

Ed doesn’t really want to break apart, but they need air and Oswald might be a little overwhelmed, if his open mouth and tinged-pink cheeks are any indication.  Ed smiles.

“To answer your question,” he says, “I’m attracted to you because I’ve seen who and what you are; I’ve seen your pain and I’ve seen your brilliance and I’ve seen what we can do together.  And,” he brushes his hand over Oswald’s bedhead, “I think you’re beautiful.”

Oswald scoffs; he looks away again. 

Ed presses on, he teases.  “Don’t tell me the man who wears tailored suits and plans his hair is insecure about his looks?”

“What do you think,” Oswald snaps.  He refuses to look back at Ed.  That won’t do; Ed takes two fingers under Oswald’s chin and makes him look at him.

“I think,” Ed tells him, “You’re worried over nothing, at least as far as whether or not I’m interested, or find you attractive or, if you’ll one day let me, want to fuck you,” Oswald gasps.  Whether it’s at the sudden vulgarity, or the idea, Ed doesn’t know.  “Remember, I saw you in next to nothing before.  I had to; in order to clean your wounds and get you into fresh clothes.  I know what you look like under your suits and I like it.” 

Oswald swallows hard; “Ed,” he starts.  He closes his eyes and leans into Ed’s hand as it cups the side of his face.  “ _Ed_ ,” he repeats, “I’ve never done anything like this.  I’ve never wanted anyone like this.  I never thought I’d fall for anyone, and I don’t know if or when I can give you that.”

Ed knows; he’s far luckier than he had thought even still.  Ed had thought Oswald did not, could not, feel anything for him at all, but after all this he’s in love with him.

 _Oswald Cobblepot is in love with me_.

For that he’ll take multiple cold showers a day if he must.  “I understand,” he tells him.  “And, as it stands, this sling impedes everything I’d like to do if you even were interested, so there’s no rush.”

Oswald tilts his head.  “About that,” he says.  “I was wondering…putting on ties and suits will be a bit of a hassle.  Should I…” he glances at Ed’s tee shirt and gently trails his index finger down the center of Ed’s chest.  It doesn’t feel erotic so much as it feels like Oswald is studying him, learning how to become comfortable with Ed’s body.  “Would you like me to help you with that?” he asks.

In a different situation, Ed would feel offended at someone’s offer of helping him dress and undress.  With Oswald, though, his heartbeat speeds up.  “I imagine this isn’t strictly an act of generosity?” he teases.

Oswald flushes slightly.  “I’d like to learn to touch you.  I just, I don’t know how.  I don’t know how much I want or how much I can do.”  He grins at Ed.  “That, and you still need to keep up appearances.  At least in the public eye.”

Ed can live with this.  After everything that’s happened, after all the heartbreak they could have avoided, something’s going right for him. 

…………………………..

They go over paperwork, office grind.  Oswald finds himself looking at Ed more than his own work—partly out of appreciation, of course.  Amazement.  _Ed wants him back_.

It does nothing to assuage all his questions, the confusion, the fact that Ed wants him but still stood him up a week ago, even if it was for a woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to his dead ex.

Finally, he sets down his pen, resigned to the fact that he’s not going to digest a word of what he’s reading until Ed talks to him, and asks, “I don’t understand.  When did you decide you liked me?”

Ed glances up.  He sighs and runs his good hand through his hair—it’s down, tousled in its natural waves.  It makes him look younger.  “You want the short answer or the long answer?”

Oswald raises his eyebrows. 

Ed looks back down before answering.  “I think the first time I started feeling…things…that weren’t completely platonic, was when you were staying at my apartment, and I didn’t recognize it for what it was until months later.” 

 _That long_? Oswald thinks as he sits, stunned.  _Why did you never say anything_?  _Why did I never see it_?

“I fell in love with you during your campaign.”  Ed’s voice cuts through the fog, the confusion.  Fell in love.  _Amazing_.  “I remember the exact moment,” he adds, and grins.  “The moment you showed me the framed certificates, side by side—” he gestures to the imaginary certificates in the air in front of him.  “That’s when I knew.”

“You…”  Oswald starts, then stops.  In _love_?  So why…

“But I knew, or rather I was certain, that you weren’t interested.  In the time I’ve known you, for all that I’ve studied you, you never showed any romantic or sexual interest in anyone.  I thought you were incapable.”

“ _So did I._ ”  Oswald doesn’t realize at first that he’s spoken the words aloud.  Ed smiles at him; a sad ‘ _how stupid were we_ ’ smile. 

“All the same, why stand me up?  Why stand me up to be with someone else if you were in love with me?”

Ed takes in Oswald’s features, and something must resonate, because his face softens.  “Fear.  Stupidity.  Animal attraction.”  Ed smooths his good hand over finished documents.  “She looked exactly like a woman I’d loved and killed, and it all raised a lot of questions about my safety that needed answers.  And….well…she _looked exactly like a woman I’d loved and killed_ , so I was drawn to her.  She was the only person I’d ever slept with.  That kind of does something to a person.  At least, it did to me.”

“You didn’t think to warn anyone, ‘Hey, I met a woman identical to a woman I murdered, after all the people I know who could’ve orchestrated this who hate both of us, but I’m not gonna worry about it or even tell you because I wanna get laid,” Oswald says.  _Reckless, stupid_.  He doesn’t mean to sound angry, really, but he can’t mask his incredulity.  Of course Ed would possess the ego to investigate on his own, especially if it meant the possibility of fucking a doppelganger.

“I’m aware of how stupid it was, Oswald,” Ed tells him; there’s an edge in his voice, not harsh, but defensive.  “I have a history of taking risks and acting reckless.  I’m just trying to explain it to you.”

Oswald sighs.  He tends to forget the times he carries such tension in his neck it cricks when he turns his head; it’s nothing compared to his leg that he always ignores.  “Alright.  Fine.  You thought she was a threat you could or needed to handle on your own, because you were curious and thought she was significant only to you.”

Ed nods.  “And,” he says, after a moment, “I wanted to distract myself.”

“From what?”

Ed laughs softly to himself.  “Everything I felt for you, what I thought you didn’t, couldn’t, feel for me.  Try and remind myself that at least someone shows an interest in me, even if it’s under suspicious circumstances.”

Oswald considers this, the injuries, the idea that he almost got Ed killed—and by that logic, Ed almost got himself killed—and can think of nothing else to do except to cover Ed’s hand with his own.  It’s smaller than Ed’s, of course, and he twines his bony fingers with Ed’s longer digits. 

Ed glances at their joined hands.  “And I still haven’t really said the words yet, have I?

“Oswald,” he starts,

Before they hear a knock at the door.

They both sigh.  Oswald withdraws his hand.  “Yes?” he calls.

One of his assistants comes in, a vague shape behind her.  “Detective Gordon is here to see you,” she says, and the man himself emerges, holding a couple of folders.

“Detective,” Oswald repeats as Jim walks in.  “When’d you get reinstated?”

“Shortly after the last time we spoke,” Jim replies.  He glances at Nygma, greeting his cold gaze with the same look.  “I have some bad news for you; Isabella Flynn’s bail was posted and paid.  She’s free to roam until the court date as long as she stays in Gotham.”

Oswald looks at Jim’s smug, superior face, can’t look at Ed as his blood roars and his face and neck feel all-too-hot.  He hadn’t realized he’d been holding a pen until he feels it crack in his grip.

 _Isabella’s free_.

“ _What_?” he says, tries to keep his voice at a reasonable volume.  It feels so similar to the moment Galavan walked free, of crushing rage.  The only difference is the one person left that he loves is right beside him.

“The name is Kathryn Genovese.  She has no relationship to Ms. Flynn, but is known as a philanthropist in Gotham.”  Jim sets the folders down in front of Oswald.  “Thought you might appreciate a copy of what I could find on her, but there isn’t much to be found.  Whoever she is, she sticks to the shadows if she’s not making donations or going to charities.’

Oswald finally manages a glance at Ed, who sits so still Oswald wonders if he’s gone into shock.

“Thanks, _detective,_ ” Oswald says.  He needs to get Jim out of here.  He needs to make sure Ed’s okay.  He has no interest in answering any of Jim’s questions about his and Ed’s relationship.  “Anything else?”

“Yeah.  You might want to look into her different charities and contributions.  Could find more answers there.  I get the impression she’s part of a larger group.”  Jim nods at him and Ed as if in deference ( _for someone you allowed to be tortured for a crime you committed and for someone you would’ve happily let bleed to death? Asshole.)_ before leaving.

Oswald waits until the door’s shut and Jim’s footsteps fade out before reaching forward and grabbing Ed’s hand once more.  “Ed,” he says, softly as he can manage in spite of his rage, his feelings of impotence, of fear, of an unknown threat he can’t predict.  “Say something.”

Ed leans forward and kisses Oswald fiercely and without warning, grips the back of his head as he seems to pour every breath into him, and Oswald’s stuck, shocked at the sudden contact.  The kiss is hard and desperate, a need for comfort, a need for reassurance.  He breaks away and rests his forehead against Oswald’s, brings his hand to the side of his face, cradles it in his palm.

“Oswald, I love you,” he says.  His hand travels to Oswald’s hair, down the side of his neck, back to his face.  “Whatever happens, I need you to know that.”

Oswald, unsure of how to touch, how to kiss or caress, hesitates before he brings his hands to each side of Ed’s face.  “You’re going to be okay,” he says.  He doesn’t know how this could be true, except that it is.  He’ll never let anyone hurt Ed again. 

“And I love you, too.  You wanted to know what I was going to say at dinner?”  Ed doesn’t say anything, just holds onto him with his one good hand and his breath stuttering.   “I was going to tell you, but Gotham’s a cesspit where nothing ever goes according to plan so I’m saying it now.  I love you, Edward Nygma, and I will do anything to keep you safe.” 

Whatever group this is, Isabella will tell them how much Ed means to Oswald.  They also better realize that trying to put him in danger will be the worst mistake they ever make.

……………………………

Kathryn Genovese funded a great deal of research at Arkham, as it turns out.  Strange was in her—and her associates’s—pockets.  Sometimes Jim is right; she’s most likely working with others, but they haven’t found any other names.

“They were invested in the monsters,” Oswald says as he glances everything over.  “They must have been—they put a lot of money into it and trying to raise the dead.  Of course I’d make an enemy of them.”

“I’d always wondered how Strange got the money for his experiments,” Ed muses.  “Reanimated corpses, monsters in the basement—it wasn’t taxpayer-funded, that’s for sure.  Except there has to be more to it than that, right?” he looks up.  “They’re essentially recruiting a woman with no powers but a grudge against me and possible dirt on both of us.”

“So it could be they don’t want me in power and will do anything to hurt me and everyone I care about.”  Oswald looks at Ed’s fading bruises—the black eye the most prominent, but even that’s fading.  He looks at Ed’s sling.  They’ll be back for him.  Isabella knows Oswald loves him and now she’s indebted to some very powerful people who hate him.  “They’re not the only ones,” Oswald adds, mulls over what he doesn’t want to think about but must. 

“We have to be careful,” he says.  “Word cannot get out any further exactly what we are to each other.  Only problem is the whole GCPD probably knows at this point.  Best we can do is give them nothing to make them think it’s true.

“We can’t be open about this,” Oswald says.  It’s a revelation; one he hates.  He wants to show the world how amazing the man in front of him is, how clever and brilliant and gorgeous, how he’s never felt like he’s fit with another like this.  That everyone who ever underestimated Edward Nygma is an idiot, and here’s the proof.  But for the sake of their safety, he can’t.

Ed’s eyes flash.  “I’m not some dirty secret,” he snaps.

“I know that!” Oswald snaps back, stung.  “You know how proud I am of you?  How amazing and attractive I find you?  How lucky I am that you want to be with me?”

Ed watches Oswald’s face, as if seeking out a lie, a tell, and finds none. 

Oswald presses on.  “If love is a weakness, then we’re both in trouble.  Whatever this organization is, they’ll find out just how much you mean to me, so will Barbara and everyone under her thumb if Tabitha’s still alive, as will the GCPD.  The more people know, the more enemies will try to endanger you, and I can’t let that happen.  Never again.”

He hasn’t seen Barbara yet—he wanted to make sure Ed was sure about the decision.  It’s the first place they can look, provided Tabitha is lucid by then.  If she isn’t dead, anyway.  “I say we continue our research with Sirens.”

……………………………………

Oswald helps Ed get dressed in one of his suits for the evening.

Ed, thankfully, already has on his pants, slacks (no belt) and an undershirt and offers no randy quips as Oswald dresses him in a charcoal shirt and emerald tie; Ed has to take his arm out of its sling, the cast gone, and hold it with his good arm while Oswald gets to work.

“Ever learn a double Windsor?” Oswald asks to break the tension.  Ed is…he looks very nice in just his undershirt clinging to a lean, taut body, and with that image against his still-wavy hair intimidates Oswald as much as it intrigues him.

 _How could he possibly think I’m attractive enough for him_?

Ed shakes his head and smiles; the fond look hasn’t once faded.  Oswald’s hands stutter on the tie.  “You could teach me,” he offers. 

Oswald tries to smile back.  He has to lean up to reach Ed’s throat, in any case; he wonders if Ed likes the (at least) six inches height difference between them, if he finds it endearing as Oswald finds Ed’s height and impossibly long legs attractive.  He thinks of how much Ed has yet to learn, brilliant as he is, of the tools of the trade.  The manipulation, the schmoozing, the intimidation and subtle threats.  Ed often has trouble with social cues—he can’t help it, and in many ways that’s where Oswald comes in, but Oswald can teach him different cheats, different tools to help him along and help him build his own base of operations.

Ed's not a physical man, not a fighter (neither is Oswald, to be fair, but he learned to be adept with a switchblade from a young age) and even if he gains his own bodyguards and henchmen he’ll need to learn a little self-defense, preferably in the form of firearms.  “I can teach you to shoot a gun properly when you’re done healing.  An HK G36K, even.  I’ve used one.”

Ed snickers.

“What?”

Ed grins.  “That’s a huge machine gun, right?  It must’ve been half your size.”

Oswald glares at him.  Ed still laughs.

“I’m sorry, the image is just so…”

“Silly?”

“So _you_.”  Ed stops Oswald in his actions and leans down to press a kiss to his forehead.  It’s such a chaste, innocent, yet affectionate gesture Oswald’s hands freeze like a mime’s in front of Ed’s chest.  “Dealing with things everyone thinks is too large for you, and then showing them wrong.  Part of why you’ve always fascinated me.”

Oswald cannot speak for a moment.  He regains his senses, finishes Ed’s tie—it compliments the warmth of his peachy skin, his dark hair and eyes so beautifully, like an autumnal god of sorts—and retorts, “Did I?”

Ed chuckles.  “Couldn’t you tell from the moment we met?”

Oswald remembers.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t particularly cordial then,” he tells Ed, tilts his face up to his and meets a gaze that regards him with such fondness that still frightens him a little.  Oswald isn’t used to being loved, even if he does know the feeling even if it was in a different form.  Ed isn’t used to being loved, either, it seems.  There’s a great many questions about Ed Oswald has yet to ask.  He’ll leave it for another time.  “If I knew just how much you’d mean to me then,” he starts.

“I understand,” Ed finishes as Oswald gets Ed’s jacket on without causing stress on Ed’s injured shoulder.  His bruises haven’t completely faded; this won’t do. 

“I have concealer if you want any,” Oswald tells him.  “For the bruises.  I used to wear it all the time when I was younger.  Didn’t want to frighten Mother.”

Ed considers this.  “You’ve been through what I have quite often, haven’t you?” he asks.

Oswald shrugs.  “It came with the territory of my job.  I got used to it.”

Ed frowns.  “That doesn’t make it better,” he tells him. 

“Probably not, but it doesn’t make what happened to you any better, either.  I signed up for this kind of life.  You didn’t.  So, concealer?  Wouldn’t want the murder wives to get too smug.”

…………………………………………………..

Barbara looks lovely as ever, resplendent in a white pantsuit and treacherous heels, perhaps drunk, perhaps not, but holding herself up well.

“Hello, gentlemen,” she says as she air-kisses both of their cheeks.  “Welcome to Sirens, home of Gotham’s finest and least fine.”

“Fantastic.  We want info on this woman,” Oswald replies, slapping his folder filled with information on Isabella on the bar.  It’s a combination of information he and Ed found with that of the GCPD.

“That lovely Kim Novak look-alike?” Barbara says, so cheerful Oswald could spit, and spreads her manicured nails over the documents.  “Yes, I believe I saw her a few times before the attack, and once when she was bailed out.”

“This afternoon?” Oswald says.  His voice sounds far less choked than it feels, considering he could lose his voice over his own anger.  How _dare_ Barbara….

“You never agreed to any protection,” Barbara reminds them, wagging her finger at them.  Oswald spares a glance at Ed, whose face, taut and grim, is otherwise unreadable.  Could be his premeditating murder face, in which case Oswald can’t blame him.

“And if we agree to it now?” Oswald asks, voice tight.

Barbara tilts her neck at the most uncomfortable angle as she observes him and Ed, appraising him as though he were meat for the slaughter.  “Handsome not-boyfriend you have there, mister Mayor.  Mind if I have a go with him?”  
“Not interested, thanks,” Ed responds, teeth gritted as much as his jaw will allow.

“What he said,” Oswald adds.

Barbara offers an exaggerated pout before getting the bartender’s attention.  “One gin gimlet, and…” she glances at Ed and Oswald.

“A Rusty Nail, Glenlivet Twelve.”

“Your house Pinot Noir.”

The bartender—not the Swiss Army Knife intern, turns away and gets their drinks.  Oswald speaks first.

“If we agree to your offer, we’ll rescind it the moment you or Tabitha fails on yours.  I don’t care the circumstances.  You?” Oswald turns to Ed, who looks like the modern-day Beau Brummel, his hair slicked back with care, his suit tailored to fit is tall, trim frame and concealer made to hide the fading bruises as he steadies himself.

“You know how much of this is make-up?” Ed asks Barbara.  “You know how much of this is your girlfriend’s boyfriend’s doing?”

Oswald rises from his stool and ignores the Rusty Nail sent his way.  “Ed…” he starts, hears the familiar enunciation from Ed’s lovely mouth—he enunciates more when excited or upset, Oswald’s learned, and he doesn’t want Ed to lose it here.  Barbara would only find it entertaining.

“I would’ve died days ago if Oswald hadn’t fought back.  And I know you can’t perceive me as a threat.  For my part,” he offers a tight smile. “I don’t mind.  Because I’ve done well when people have underestimated me.  That said, I can and will make your little girlfriend _wish_ she was dead if she ever, _ever_ tries this again.  And if you really love her,” Ed clicks his tongue.  “My lovely friend, that will just make it sweeter.”

Barbara bristles.  “I’ll destroy you.”

“You’ll try,” Ed replies.  He takes the glass of Pinot Noir, but doesn’t take a sip.  “I’m sure you’ll want to.  But the thing is, my _dear_ Miss Kean, I know what you stand to lose, and I also know how much you stand to gain if you ally with us.  Your little Tabby cat can’t bring you back anything better than what you stand working for us.  So, if she can’t understand that…” he shrugs, the animalistic grin on his narrow face, “It’s her loss.”

For a moment Barbara seems speechless, at least, before she replies, “So you love him back?”

Ed is, bless him, a worse liar than Oswald, even in these matters.  He gulps and takes a step back.

“Ed, did you pregame before this?” Oswald chides, leads him to the bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water and a tall Coke before turning back to Barbara.  “You think his hesitance might have to do with the fact that she tried to beat him to death?”

Barbara snorts and crosses her arms in front of her chest.  “Honey, I was part of it.  She was tagging along for Butch’s sake, wanted to let him ride out his revenge fantasy.  He wanted your…” she glances over at Ed and adds in a softer voice, “tall glass of skim-milk dead, just like that pretty blonde, then Tabitha?  Tabitha wanted to see how you’d react to seeing someone you loved die again.  You wanna know who this girl was, doncha?”

Oswald glances at Ed, who hasn’t touched a single beverage in front of him, and grasps the bar with white knuckles. 

That’s when he raps his knuckles on the folder.  “We agree to the deal, as long as neither you nor your sweet little Tabby infringe on it.  Now, tell me what you know about her.”

Barbara grins.  “Deal.  Tabitha’s out of commission still—but she’ll corroborate.

“Y’know,” she adds with that wide, sly grin, “When I first met you, I thought you were Jim’s ex-boyfriend.  Some guy Jim broke up with under unpleasant circumstances who wanted to get back in touch—like me and Renee.  Thought for a second he’d been hiding something about his sexuality, too.”

“Well, I’m not,” Oswald says, impatient.  Ed bristles next to him.  Oswald lays a hand on his arm to placate him.

“You sure?” Barbara grins at them both.  “You seemed awfully fond of him, and I don’t know what was going through that hypermasculine stunted little brain of his, but it could’ve been, if he ever experimented…”

“Quit stalling,” Oswald snaps.  Ed seems more tense than ever.

Barbara clicks her tongue.  “ _Rude_ ,” she says, and takes a sip of her gimlet.  “Fine.  This is what I know…”

………………………………………..

There’s bupkis as far as new information on Isabella Flynn is concerned, except something uttered at the Sirens right after her release from probation.

Barbara shrugs, cackles and salutes.  “It was before you agreed to it, Sunshine,” she says.  “I didn’t know if you were friend or foe.  Any case, she was a friend to Tabby for a little while.”  Barbara steps back, as if daring Oswald to attack.  He won’t, _yet_ , but the thought has occurred to him.

“Tell me what she told you,” he says.  “A deal’s a deal, yes?”

Barbara grins and gulps down the rest of her gimlet in one gulp, then hands out her glass to the bartender for a refill.  “You hear of the Court of Owls?” she asks as she snaps her fingers at the bartender for a refill.

_Fuck._

Now they have a name for the group, the threat becomes more real, and the image fits.  All-seeing, all-knowing, unseen.

“They added her to their membership?” Oswald says, treading beyond his depth for the first time in a very, _very_ long time.

“Yeah, that’s the idea.  Let’s just say, their daddy is bigger than your daddy,” Barbara replies, gives a sexy smile and _thank you_ to the bartender who gets her a new gimlet and turns back to the men before her.  “So…be prepared for a new player in a team you don’t really know who hates you,” she nods at Ed, “and hates you for protecting him,” she nods at Oswald.  “And who…”

“Who has a military background and experience with combat and firearms, yes, we gleaned that already,” Ed finishes for her.

“So they don’t want me in charge anymore?” Oswald asks.  “Don’t want me to be…what?  Mayor?  Kingpin?  Both?  It couldn’t be…”

Barbara raises one finger to interrupt.  “Too much power for one person threatens their hold on Arkham,” she says.  “It would be another Julius Caesar, so Isabella claims.  And you all know how _that_ turned out for him.”

Barbara grins at them both over the rim of her glass before she takes a sip.  “The group that inducted her wants to make sure any real power in Gotham serves under them.  That’s why they don’t like you.  And you?” she nods towards Ed, who sits, rigid, at the bar.  “You might be just as dangerous, and you two seem to have the kind of not-romantic relationship that means hurting one means hurting the other.”  Barbara grins, red lips like that of a clown, over her glass.  “Bit of a lose-lose, doncha think?”

Oswald snarls.  Ed stands to full height, all six foot one of him, which means little against Barbara’s hooker-heels and given his own sling.  And that Oswald, short, underweight, handicapped Oswald, could probably best him in a fight.  He still cuts an intimidating figure, slim as he is, above Barbie-Doll Babs.

“Let me tell you something,” Ed tells her, enunciating, which can’t be good, “As a man your girlfriend and her boyfriend almost killed in a petty little struggle, I want to know how you expect we’ll settle for the little penance you have in store.”

………………………………….

On the drive home, Ed asks, “Did you love him?”

Oswald doesn’t want to talk about this now.  Still, he asks, “Jim?” even as he knows the answer.  He sighs.  He doubts it.  “Probably not.  If falling in love feels how it was like,” he swallows, finds it so insane to believe he can say it out loud still, “to fall in love with you, then no.  But I think I might have had a crush way back when,” he tries to sort it out.  He’s ignored how he used to feel about Gordon for a long time.  “I don’t know.  I’m not really into anybody—I notice everyone who’s attractive, conventionally or unconventionally, and hell, maybe just noticing someone’s looks doesn’t mean being attracted to them—I don’t know, but I don’t want to _do_ anything with them.  Jim was intriguing for a while.”

He decides it then.  No.  Nothing he’s ever felt for anyone, Jim, Fish, when he was a new employee fascinated by her and her Machiavellian brilliance and complete ease with elegant bloodshed and strikingly beautiful looks, to the few people in his adolescence and twenties who showed him an ounce of kindness, compare to what he feels for Ed.  It’s never been all-consuming, never felt so right, never felt like he was born to feel this.  “But I didn’t love him.  If what I feel for you is love, Jim is nowhere close.”

Ed grins, perhaps not realizing Oswald can see it, as he pulls the button to his jacket open in with his good arm.  “But you had a crush on him?” he asks, his sudden confidence slipping.  The grin is reptilian, and as good as it looks on him, the implication gives Oswald pause.

 _I don’t fucking know_.  “Possibly.  Maybe it was hero worship.  Don’t know, don’t care.  It’s all in the past.”  He looks up at Ed, and he finally realizes (how long did that take?) that the expression on his face is jealous.  He’s starting to understand Ed again, and his heart sings.   “You’re the one, the _only_ person I’ve ever truly loved,” he amends, of course, because it would be unfair to Ed, and he doesn’t want to be unfair to Ed, “at least, anyone in that capacity.  Anyone outside of my family.”

Ed looks down at him.  Something in his expression seems, for whatever the hell reason, nonplussed.

“You don’t believe me?” Oswald challenges him.  “You were my first kiss.  I mean it.”

“And I believe you.  I just…”  Ed tentatively touches Oswald’s hair, styled for the event, without mussing it.  “You felt more for me than anyone?”

 _I can’t help who I love,_ Oswald thinks, _but I’m glad it wasn’t Jim._

“ _He_ was a schoolboy crush over ten years too late.  That’s all,” Oswald tells him.  “Not sure I even wanted to kiss him.  Just admired him a great deal, wanted him to approve of me.”

“And now?” Ed asks. 

Oswald can’t help but feel annoyed at the hint of accusation.

“He means nothing,” Oswald replies, stung again.  He wonders, for all that they work together, that this might be a continuing problem they have.  Their combined jealousy, neither thinking they’re good enough.  Even now, save for his status, he doesn’t understand why anyone would want him.  “Is that what you want to know?  No, I don’t love him.  I never have.  What I felt, at most,” he repeats, for good measure, “was a boyhood crush, hero worship.  I thought he was either Gotham’s white knight or someone I could manipulate into my own creation.  Yet you, _you_ were neither.  You found out who you were before me.”

Ed says nothing.  He reaches again for Oswald’s hand and takes it in his own.  They’re silent for the rest of the trip home.

When Oswald helps Ed out of his tie, jacket, and dress shirt—it requires far less effort to undress than to dress, but he likes the intimacy—and readjusts Ed’ sling, Ed leans down, waits for Oswald to rise to tiptoe, and kisses him.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“For what?” Oswald asks, one hand touching Ed’s good shoulder, feeling the heat of his skin beneath his undershirt.

“For loving me,” Ed tells him.  “If knowing you liked Jim…” he stops, lowers his head again to press his lips to Oswald’s hair.  “I can’t imagine how rough it must’ve been for you, seeing me date someone else.”

 “It was hell,” he admits.  “If I were a better man I probably would’ve been happy for you, knowing you were dating again, but we both know that’s not the case.”

Ed laughs.  “But you’re _my_ man, and none of this would work if you were any different.”

………………………………………………………

The day Ed gets his sling off is the night they first meet Kathryn.

Ed still asks Oswald to help him with his double-Windsor knot, teases Oswald by settling (both!) hands on his waist, then lowers them in what he hopes is a tantalizing fashion down to his skinny hips and watches Oswald flush as Ed steps in closer to him.  They have an event to which they’re both invited; a charity fundraiser for the school system to support the newly-approved vote to start bussing schools.  As it stands, they still have only a few names, and they don’t know if and how Strange is still in the Court’s pocket, but they recognize two from the guest list, and if their attendance were not mandatory, the names would have provided enough incentive to go.

A tall, striking, austere middle-aged woman greets them first as they get situated with glasses of Prosecco. 

“Evening Mr. Mayor, Mr. Nygma,” she says, her own glass apparently untouched so far.  “Pleasure to see your support for a more equal education system.”

“Ah, well,” Oswald turns and smiles briefly at Ed.   “I grew up in the inner city, in an area that didn’t have proper funding for the schools in my district, so it was a concern of mine with the school board.  Once you see firsthand the inequity of the schooling in Gotham, it’s tough to ignore.”

“And you, Mr. Nygma?” the woman’s gaze pierces him; a diamond-cutting laser that leaves him feeling open before the cut can register first.  His skin crawls and his shoulder aches.  He doesn’t know her, doesn’t recognize her, and knows she hasn’t offered a name, but immediately something in him panics.  Then something clicks.  Something in him senses that this woman is part of the Court, that this woman had something to do with Isabella’s bail, that this woman wants him and Oswald dead.  That she’s the reason the woman who nearly killed him is safe and sound.

“I wasn’t raised in Gotham,” he says, and prides himself on his even voice as his brain goes on autopilot trying to figure out how to get a tell out of her.  He glances at Oswald and wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.  Knowing Oswald, he probably holds every unfamiliar face in suspicion.  “I was raised in upstate New York, but I do think reforming the education system is a priority, especially when helping fix class and income inequality in the city.”

“So true,” the woman says, and glances between the two.  Ed senses Oswald stiffen and extend his hand.  He must be suspicious, then. 

“My apologies, I have seen you in passing but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Oswald says, smiling his “politician” smile. 

“Forgive me,” Kathryn says, unsmiling, as she takes Oswald’s hand and shakes it.  “I’m Kathryn.  I work in charities.”

Ed’s heart drops the pit of his stomach.  It’s her.  He feels his face and the back of his neck grow hot.  He tries to keep his hands steady as he studies the expression of someone actively plotting his and Oswald’s downfall.

Oswald retains his neutral smile as he drops his hand.  “Ah, yes.  Kathryn Genovese.  You’re quite the legend in philanthropy, are you not?”

“Ah, so you’re familiar with my work?” Kathryn says.

Oswald still smiles.  “Indeed.  You’re a powerful figure in Gotham.”  Oh, he knows.  And perhaps she knows he knows.  Perhaps _he knows_ she knows he knows. For once, Ed says nothing, and watches them.

“Not quite as powerful as you, Mr. Mayor,” Kathryn replies.  She keeps her gaze even and as Oswald meets it head-on Ed thinks he’s going to be sick, but still his fascination grows. 

“Perhaps not,” Oswald says, and his smile shifts to all teeth.  “Although you do keep a low profile.”

Kathryn smiles back, even if it is little more than an upward slant of red lips.  “Silence is golden, as they say.”

“And money speaks volumes,” Oswald replies.  “I have heard very illustrious things about you, Ms. Genovese.  It’s a pleasure to finally speak to you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”  She eyes Ed for a moment, and Ed finds himself taking a step forward before he can realize it, before Oswald can lay a hand on his arm.  “Empires topple and fall frequently, but you have built a very powerful one.”

Oswald’s hand tightens.  “Thank you.  I do not expect it will crumble any time soon.”

Kathryn raises her glass.  “To charity,” she offers in a toast, and as Ed clinks his glass to hers, he worries his grip will shatter the flute stem.

She leaves, and Ed is shaking, wondering what the hell just happened, and he fears Oswald has just declared war.

…………………………………………………….

It takes the Court less than two weeks after that to publicly lash out.

Oswald doesn’t know who else it could be; they own Strange and everyone he’s enhanced, and whatever abomination that can change form has to be Strange’s work. 

 _I should’ve killed him_ , Oswald thinks.  _Even if I’d left Fish alive, I should’ve murdered that sick motherfucker for everything he’s done_ , but hindsight is 20/20.

Hindsight takes the form his father.

Oswald’s delivering a public speech on improving the public transportation system—aided by the generous contributions of Wayne Enterprises and young mister Bruce Wayne’s early adeptness with business and philanthropy, and as he scans his audience he sees someone at the front of the crowd.

He stops mid-sentence.  His throat becomes dry and he’s standing silent and open-mouthed like an imbecile.  He senses Ed shift and touch his arm beside him. 

“I…” his heart thuds as he locks gazes with the man in front of him—medium height, slender, early sixties, completely identical to the man he’d known and loved as his father far too briefly.  Time slows for him; he doesn’t know how long he’s rendered speechless but it’s enough to render confused murmurs from the crowd.

The man

_father_

_my father_

_I saw you die_

Stands expressionless for a moment before coming forward.  Security flanking Oswald and Ed start forward, and Oswald quickly raises his hand to stop them.

“It’s alright!” he says, finally finds his voice.  The man continues walking forward before he reaches the lectern, his head barely poking out over the top. 

“What?” the man—it can’t be his father.  It’s not his father

_not my father not my father not my father_

Asks, and _God_ , he sounds just like him.  “Can’t acknowledge your old man?”

No.  _No_. 

“I…you’re not…”

“What is it?  Scared of what I’ll say?  Scared I’ll tell these nice people everything you told me?  How you’re a crook and a thief?  A cold-blooded killer?  That you got elected for, what was it, killing monsters?  But we both know better, don’t we?”

Oswald feels sick.  His father, the gentle, forgiving man who’d loved him and saved him wouldn’t say things like this.

But he didn’t live to see what Oswald did to his wife and step-children. 

He hurts, actually, physically hurts.  He feels like someone is tearing into his gut, pulling out his insides and twisting them in a gnarled grasp.

“We both know the biggest monster in this city is you.”

The crowd is growing louder; he hears boos and doesn’t know if they’re directed at him or at his

_not my father_

And security saying something, maybe asking Oswald permission to step forward and restrain the man in front of him.  Ed’s saying something, is shaking Oswald’s shoulder, but none of it matters.

Then the man draws a gun from his coat.

Security has to stop him then; it’s their job, their requirement, but Oswald panics.  Whatever this is, whoever it is, he still sees his father.  His _father_.  He still sees him in the flesh one last time, still hears his voice.  He hears his own voice, a shrill, terrified cry, “ _No!  Don’t shoot_!” barely heard above the cacophony as people in the crowd scream and start to disperse.  “ _Don’t hurt him_!”

But the man doesn’t point the gun at Oswald.  He points the end of the barrel at himself, at his temple.

The bullet goes off; Oswald screams.

He thinks Ed’s holding him up as he doubles over, holds him back as he tries to leave the lectern to hold the body in his arms

_again_

and he thinks he might be sobbing, but he can’t sense any of it.  The gunshot rings in his ears, he can’t see through the sudden tears.  He thinks he might be saying something, the words, “ _Dad_ ” over and over, but nothing registers.  Security escorts him inside; he doesn’t get to see the lifeless body behind his lectern, doesn’t get to finish his speech, doesn’t get to do anything other than shake as Ed wraps an arm around his shoulders and murmurs things in his ear Oswald doesn’t register and doesn’t care about, just to let Oswald focus on Ed’s voice.

………………………………………..

The body is taken to the morgue—Ed gets the call that the body shifted into a mass morph, a creature that lived after his disguise died, shifted, and rampaged the building, killing three people before being tranquilized and restrained.  A shape-shifting monster.  Ed does his best to make sure the press knows nothing about it before he goes to see Oswald in the sitting room.

He’s nearly nude by his typical standards; his jacket is off, his cravat untied and the first few buttons leading to the column of his throat are unbuttoned, as are his cuffs.  His sleeves rolled up to expose his wiry forearms as he sits, silent in front of the fireplace.  He has a tumbler and decanter of scotch on the table beside him that goes untouched as he stares at the fireplace.  The tears have tried, but its remnants have left splotchy trails down his face.

Ed wants to kiss him, wants to press his lips to the drying tears, to every freckle, but he isn’t sure if that’s what Oswald needs right now.  Oswald doesn’t acknowledge him at first as Ed walks in and shuts the door behind him.

After a moment, Oswald says, eyes still the fire, his voice very small, like that of a boy’s, “I really miss him.”

Ed sits down on the settee opposite him.  “I know,” he says.  He can’t offer any stories of his own.  He has no relationship with his father, or with his mother for that matter, but he is pretty sure Oswald doesn’t want to hear it anyway.

Ed waits a few moments and uses that time to choose his words carefully.  “It was a monster.  One that you spared,” he says.  “It had the ability to shapeshift.”

Oswald huffs, but says nothing.

“It was alive after it shifted back.  It,” Ed hesitates.  “It did a lot of damage at the morgue before it was contained.”

“The press is going to have a field day,” Oswald says finally.

 _Possibly_.  “I’m doing everything I can to keep it contained,” Ed tells him.  “No one has to know about the monster, the morgue.”

Oswald glances up.  “Everyone knows there’s something wrong.  That someone who looked exactly like my late father killed himself in front of me.  That I had a mental breakdown in public.”

“The Court owns everything Strange does,” Ed tells him.

“So this is their first attack,” Oswald says.  He sounds hollow.  “They certainly know how to strike.”

Ed rises to stand; he wants to give affection.  It’s an instinct he’s always had, but he doesn’t always know how to do it right.  He settles for crossing over and slowly cupping Oswald’s cheek with his palm.  He strokes Oswald’s cheekbone with his thumb and sighs as Oswald places his own hand over it, holds it to his cheek.

That night Ed sleeps in Oswald’s room.  They sleep, fully-clothed and somehow startlingly intimate despite the lack of sex.  Ed holds him close, wraps his arms around Oswald and buries his face in his hair, listens to Oswald breathe, brings his thumb to Oswald’s wrist to feel the reassuring beat of his pulse.  This is the affection Oswald needs, and Ed is all too happy to give it.

…………………………………….

They try to keep it contained, and the killing spree in the morgue is kept quiet, but all the theories and possibilities among the spectators feed into the press and lead to one very popular idea: Oswald failed to kill every monster.

His popularity drops as he and Ed gear up for Isabella’s trial.  They don’t know who they own anymore, don’t know who will continue to show unwavering loyalty to them or who the Court has bought out in Oswald’s stead.  Ed manages to help Oswald regain a few points in popularity through a food drive, but the Court has made its mark.

That’s to say nothing of the fiasco that occurs during the trial.

Ed and Oswald met with Barbara and Tabitha once when Tabitha’s recovered well enough to speak for herself.  The scars that cross-work her face haven’t damaged her eyes or nose, and while she’s wheelchair bound (temporarily, Barbara claims) she has all her arms and legs, her hands and feet.  Oswald chooses not to mention her right trigger finger is gone.  A scar peeking at her collar hints at further tortures Oswald can’t begrudge Zsasz, even as he begrudges sparing her life in the first place.

“I don’t know what she’s going to do or say,” Tabitha tells them.  “I assume she’s going to try to cover her own ass and leave me out to dry, but it means nothing to me.  The bitch is on her own.”

“And you haven’t talked to her?” Oswald demands.

“Like you said,” Tabitha snaps back, “A deal’s a deal.  I haven’t talked to her since I got shot.  Any case, I can’t exactly poke my head out, can I?  I’m wanted by the cops, too.”

“And about to be condemned at a court trial?  Can’t imagine how that feels,” Oswald replies.

Still they have little choice except to believe her, and her words prove true. 

…………………………………………

Edward Nygma is a convicted felon.  He murdered a woman identical to the one sitting demure and suitably frightened at the podium, and the similarities don’t help when Isabella tearfully describes how Butch Gilzean and Tabitha Galavan forced her to act as a mole to entice her sister’s killer into a trap, how she’d moved to Gotham to get away from her ex-husband and got caught in a dangerous situation that threatened her remaining family.  She sits and lies like a pro, attains sympathy as an angelic-looking former soldier who put herself through college after serving her country, as a grieving sister suffering under the additional stress of a recent divorce.  She holds steadfast to every lie as she describes the night’s events as a traumatized, innocent woman forced to seduce the man who murdered her twin sister and to enact violence that triggered memories of some the worst moments she spent in hostile territory.  She spins a haunting tale that places all the blame square on Butch and Tabitha.

It's brilliant, even as Ed feels bile rise to his throat, as his shoulder twinges as he hears her quivering voice.  Even as he knows Oswald is fuming beside him, he could almost see her story unveil to replace what he saw, what he felt.  Even now there are moments he sees and hears Kristen again.  And he thinks he’s going to be sick.

He realizes, no matter how loyal the judge could be, the jury frightened of Oswald, his testimony will mean so little compared to hers.  He speaks honestly, swears under oath that he’d never intended any foul play, that Isabella had told him she’d had her own separate motivation for taking his life, that she had stated she was seeking revenge.  Even Oswald’s similar testimony, none of it dislodges the idea of an innocent, good-hearted, heroic woman who was forced to play as a pawn to take down a powerful, sinister man.

He senses it, he knows Oswald senses it, but it doesn’t make it easier to hear the jury to declare her innocent of all charges.  He grips Oswald’s hand as he senses Oswald try to stand.  His mouth is trapped, lips tight and jaw clenched, but he holds it together and wonders how many people the Court bought out just to cinch the deal.

His heart pounds and the words ring and even as he needs Oswald to stay calm, he needs to get the hell out of here.

The moment they get home, the moment they’re safe from prying eyes, Ed can’t help it; he grips the back of Oswald’s head, pulls him in close, props his back to the wall and kisses him hard, more intrusive than he’s done before.  He feels Oswald part his lips of his own accord and dives his tongue in, and with every lick and breath tries to find some kind of peace.  He vaguely hears Oswald give a soft whine and tense, hands turning into claws on Ed’s upper arms before moving into the embrace, tilts himself up to allow Ed better access. 

Ed realizes he’s holding back tears, holding back screams of _impotent_ rage and has only the man in his arms to keep him from breaking down.  He tries to calm down and pull away, tries to breathe and focus on Oswald’s hand rubbing circles between his shoulder blades.

He starts to cry, and he realizes none of it is from grief.  He’s fucking _furious_.  With himself, with his stupid infatuations, with fucking Butch and Tabitha and, yes, the woman he’d known would be dangerous but had craved with such immediate and frightening intensity he couldn’t question it.  He feels so stupid and useless and _weak_.  He was tortured and shot and he _almost fucking died_ and his own idiocy played so far into it.  What’s more, he hasn’t been able to do a damn thing.  Butch is lucky, so goddamn lucky he died quickly, because the things Ed would’ve done to him….

He's _powerless_.  He’s supposedly the mayor’s right-hand man, the kingpin’s right-hand man, and he just watched the woman who tortured and tried to kill him walk free.

“ _Ed._ ”

He isn’t sure if Oswald was speaking earlier, but it’s the first word that he registers, and the hands on his face, thumbs swiping under his eyes.  He wills himself to listen.

“Ed.  I’m here for you.  Anything you want, anything you need.  Understand?”

 

Later they lay in Oswald’s room, and Ed sprawls over him, brings one ear above Oswald’s heart, needing to hear the reassuring beat, feel the warmth of a rising and falling chest.  He’s learning more and more how much he needs affection, how much he needs physical contact. 

They lay there, silent, Oswald absently stroking Ed’s hair and back as he stares at the ceiling.  It’s eons before he speaks.

“We’ll make her pay,” he says.

Ed doesn’t have to ask who.  He doesn’t have it in him to speak.

“I promised I’d never let anyone hurt you again.”  Ed senses Oswald close his other hand into a fist over the covers.  “And I won’t.  Even if it means burning Gotham to the fucking ground.”

And, as Ed nuzzles closer, he thinks those are among the kindest words anyone has ever said to him.

……………………………………………………………..

After that Isabella disappears; as soon as she’s escorted from the courthouse she’s a ghost once more.  Ed has no doubt she’s been initiated into the Court, but he can’t track them down.  The address he found for Kathryn leads to a townhouse that serves only as a business center, and not her true home, and he finds nothing.

After that the main problem with Oswald’s popularity isn’t the possibility that monsters still threaten Gotham.  It’s Ed’s position as his right-hand man.  All his crimes, ones of which he was cleared, ones for which he served his time in hell, resurface.  Petitions circle for the mayor to have him fired, and Oswald ignores every one Ed presents to him.

“I’m damaging your position as mayor,” Ed says at one point.  “Between the monster and me, the city is starting to _hate_ you.”  Oswald doesn’t look up as he sets the poll results aside.  “You could regain your popularity if I wasn’t here.”

Oswald looks at him.  “Not an option.  You’re the one who made this possible for me in the first place.”  He meets Ed’s desperate attempts to sway him with a hard, flinty gaze.  “I suggest we arrange a meeting with Ms. Genovese.”

…………………………………………………

Oswald meets at the Sirens only once, and to make good on his end of the bargain.  He assigns a few of his followers to supplement Barbara’s attempts to keep Tabitha under the radar, and in return Barbara helps send part of her crew to scout out higher end bars.  Some are escorts who get a more personal look at different socialites who could be part of the Court.  The more he hears, the more he believes that this is a conglomeration of Gotham’s oldest money.  No wonder they hate him.  A poor immigrant’s son becoming Gotham’s largest fixture?  Must be unthinkable to those with good breeding.

Ed contacts the only lead he has for Kathryn with an offer for drinks at the manor, and manages to get an answer.

She wants instead to meet at the _Crown Royale_ , the oldest and most expensive bar in Gotham, and a two-level historic monument that suits the Court and everything Oswald knows about it.  Oswald hires as many people as he can to occupy the place.  He buys out two of the bartenders as an extra precaution.  The Court seems to work mostly in the shadows, but he’s not about to dismiss the idea of a shootout.  He wants to cover every base.

“I’ve never been more grateful for the amount of people in your arsenal,” Ed observes as they get ready for the evening.  He secures a gun on his person—an innocuous pistol, and the only one he can use with any aptitude, despite Oswald’s best efforts.  “I think we’ll need an army to deal with what we have in store.”

Oswald grins at him.  “I _am_ an army,” he says, and Ed sneaks a small smile as he puts on his jacket.

“I know,” he tells him, and sneaks a kiss at Oswald’s temple.  “It’s what I love about you.”

Oswald sets his hand on Ed’s chest and raises to the balls of his feet to kiss him; he doesn’t know what tonight portends, and he’s always hated going into a situation not having an idea of the outcome, but there is a part of him that wonders if he’ll get another quiet moment like this with Ed; another kiss, another few minutes alone together, but he’ll fight with everything he has to make sure he does. 

“Let’s give ‘em hell.”

…………………………………………

When Ed and Oswald arrive, the hostess leads them to a private room separated off by plush red curtains. 

The first thing Ed notices is a long oak table that reminds him eerily of villains in movies offering Faustian bargains and thinly-veiled threats.  Then he notices who sits at Kathryn’s side.

“Why is she here?” Ed asks before he can stop himself.

As Kathryn sits at the head of the table, Isabella has the seat to her right.  She’s dressed to the nines, undoubtedly in gifts from her new benefactor, and regards him coolly.

It helps, at least, that he doesn’t feel longing or regret, that he doesn’t even feel nausea, terror, crushing anxiety like he did when he saw her at the trial; now he’s just plain _angry_.  He can see her at eye level as not Kristen nor his dream girl, but an enemy, and that helps ease the sight of her.

“‘ _She_ ’ can hear you,” Isabella replies.

Kathryn answers for her.  “There are many people who have their eyes on you,” she says.  “I belong to a very old organization, and while we typically keep your members to those who have lived in Gotham for generations, we sometimes make exceptions for those who prove to be particularly useful.”

“Like her, and like Hugo Strange?” Oswald says.  “Are you also keeping tabs on Fish?”

Kathryn offers an almost-smile.  “Very good, Mr. Cobblepot.  Now, how did you know that?”

“Research, for one thing,” Oswald replies.  “You funded research at Arkham, gave Strange all the tools he needed to create the abominations he did.  To torture people like me.  I know you were the one who orchestrated that day, the monster impersonating my father.”

“Yes, I imagine that once you figured out Strange’s relationship to us, it was easy to piece together the rest.  Do you understand why we have shown you opposition?”

“You feel threatened,” Oswald tells her.

Kathryn smooths her hands over the table.  “Gotham is very precious to me.  I cannot allow a brash, violent criminal to be the most powerful figure in a city you don’t deserve to run.”

“And what gives you the right to decide that?” Oswald asks.  “What are you trying to accomplish.  Why get people like Strange to work for you anyway?”

“That is none of your concern.  As for my right,” Kathryn stands.  “Gotham has had people watching over it, keeping it from falling into unclean, undeserving hands for hundreds of years.  You and your arrogance and your destructive behavior will cause nothing but trouble for the city.  You threaten the balance and equilibrium of the city.”

“Is that a fact?” Oswald says.  “Because I think I’ve done some good things for this city and, first generation or not, and I’m _so_ sorry I don’t have your inbred pedigree, Gotham is my home just as much as it is yours.”

“I think you fail to grasp the reality of the situation, Mr. Cobblepot,” Kathryn says, and her voice, while it never raises in pitch, does develop a slight edge.  “You are a violent criminal; a gangster.  You have full reign to run the criminal world here, and we have never interfered in your illegal activities, but you have no place upholding the law.  You cannot, will not, remain in office.  Sooner or later you will snap, your criminal history will catch up with you, and you will bring this city down.  And this city is mine far more than it has ever been yours, Mr. Cobblepot, because I will stop at nothing to protect it from you.”

“I beg to differ.  I love Gotham, and I am not giving up everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve because a few aristocrats think I’m incapable.”  Oswald stands his ground, one fist clenching and unclenching as he struggles to keep his voice even. 

Kathryn sighs.  “Oh, dear me,” she says.  “It appears we cannot reach an agreement like this.”

Ed’s instincts kick in after Oswald and Isabella both draw their guns, and while he fumbles with his own, he manages to cock the gun as he points it directly at Kathryn’s forehead.

The standstill lasts for a few moments.  Kathryn doesn’t draw, seems to hold no weapon. 

“Subtlety does not appear to be your strong suit, Mr. Cobblepot,” she says.  “And while we prefer to use quieter methods, we will use force if we must.”

The curtains open—Oswald’s quicker on the uptake, but a shock to his good leg has him crumbling, and Ed feels a pair of arms pin his own and disarm him before he can reach out and help him.

“ _Oz_!” Ed tries to reach out, struggles against a body far stronger than his own as another guard grabs Oswald and tries to cuff him as Oswald recovers, flails and tries to scramble to his feet.

_Oswald_

Oswald is resilient as hell.

He appears to snap one of the fingers on the hand trying to disarm him before firing into the hardwood floor.  He spits and curses, twists against a man nearly three times his size, larger than Butch had been, before he manages to turn completely in the man’s grasp and find the sheer force of will to drive his good knee straight up into his assailant’s groin.

It must hurt Oswald nearly as much as it hurts the man trapping him to do it, given how he gasps even before he gets another shock that seems to knock him out.

They manage to cuff Oswald then.  But it appears they’ve forgotten everyone in the bar to act as back-up.  At least, Ed did.

He hears it, the scuffles, the shouts.  Punches and, thankfully, no guns yet.

He tries to stamp down on his assailant’s foot, slip out of his grasp, anything, as Kathryn sets a hand on Isabella’s arm in a silent command to lower her weapon, and glides over to Ed, expression never changing.

“And you’re the man he loves, are you not?” Kathryn asks, “The man with no political experience and multiple felony convictions who became his chief of staff.  Tell me, how much would it destroy him to lose you?”

Ed says nothing.  He knows, certain as he knows anything, that Oswald would be devastated.  He can’t imagine how he’s become so important to Oswald, means as much to him as his parents did, but somehow he knows it will be the final blow if he dies.

“Isabella, what do you think?” Kathryn asks.

Isabella turns the safety on her pistol and leans against the table.  “Given my limited interactions with the mayor, I’d say it would put quite a dent in him.  And if I had to venture a guess, if their roles were reversed…” Isabella looks down at Ed, considering him and the muscles twitching in his jaw, “Well, let’s just say it would be satisfying for me to see him finally understand what I felt a year ago.”  She tilts her head.  “You love him back, don’t you?  Admitted it to yourself after he saved you and you got to walk away absolving yourself for everything you did while he took care of you?  Realized how good you have it being his lap dog?” she glances at Oswald, who still hasn’t roused yet.  “Tell me, Ed, have you had a loved one die before?”

Ed opens his mouth and she adds, “And if you say you loved Kristen one more time, if you even say her name, I promise you that I will kill him in front of you before I finished what I started in that _fucking_ warehouse.”

Kathryn clicks her tongue.  “ _Isabella_ ,” she chides, “We can make no promises of that sort yet.

“But nepotism at its finest, isn’t it?  An unqualified man appointing his unqualified lover to run Gotham with him.  Both men with multiple felony convictions, one failing in his promise to kill all Gotham’s monsters, the other a predator of gentle young women.  Imagine how the public will handle that.”

She turns to the guard holding Oswald as the outside noise grows and draws closer.  “Wake him up,” she says, and Ed flinches, lunges forward as the guard wakes Oswald up with a solid kick in the spine.

“Will that do it?” he asks as Oswald rouses and cries out, does so again when the guard delivers another swift kick to the ribs.

“Yes, that will suffice.”  Kathryn focuses on Oswald.  “Mr. Cobblepot, look at me.”

Oswald tries from where he is handcuffed, from where he’s dropped to the floor, and twists to face her.  “You _hag_ ,” he spits, and struggles as his guard picks him back up.

“Think of everything that you risk tonight if you don’t step down as mayor.  The press that has kept us out of the spotlight won’t say a word of whatever happens tonight if you agree to our requests, but they’ll come for you the moment they know you won’t cooperate with us.  The continuing experiments, the monsters.  You destroyed most of them, true, but the thing is, we now have the means to make more.  We could keep them contained, or we could set them on you at every opportunity.”

“And risk damaging the city?” Oswald asks.  “The one you’re supposedly trying to protect from me?”

“Just listing hypotheticals.  There’s also raising the points of your previous crimes, your history.  The nature of your relationship with a man the public has grown to hate.”

Oswald spares a glance over at Ed, and Ed, Ed wants to sink into the floor.

 _Love is a weakness_.

Oswald looks back at Kathryn, mouth tight and body rigid as he refuses to speak.

“Remember, Mr. Cobblepot, choose caref-”

Whatever barricade Kathryn’s arsenal managed to set up breaks; figures in black ornamented with violet and green burst through—a short-haired woman wraps a length of piano wire around the thick neck of the man holding Oswald and yanks back.  _Hard._

Ed hears the sound of a knife slicing skin behind him, feels a spray of blood against the back of his neck and the body holding his drops to the floor.  He hears more footsteps enter, hears guns cock as their saviors rummage through suit pockets to find keys.  Ed turns around, scrambles for his gun and dodges a bullet that would’ve caught him in the quadricep, reaches Oswald as the woman in the emerald mask uncuffs him and hands him his own gun.

“You okay?” he asks, as if now is the time for this.

He sees a look in Oswald’s eyes that nearly makes him shiver.

“I will be,” Oswald says, and points his gun at Kathryn’s head.

Kathryn hasn’t once bothered to arm herself, and instead eyes Oswald’s gun with disinterest.  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she says.

“And why not?” Oswald asks.

“If you kill me you’ll be next.  You must know this by now.  No matter who is at your disposal, you’re not going to survive the night without relinquishing your title as mayor.  That’s all we want, and it’s a fair deal.”

“Not after what you did,” Oswald tells her.  “Not after that monster, not after bailing _her_ out,” he nods towards Isabella, who has her gun pointed back at him.  “You were never fair, and you know it.”

“It’s nothing compared to what’s in store for you if you keep this up,” Isabella tells him.  “This is your out.”

Ed glances around him, sees the curtains parted to reveal people standing with weapons out, bodies scattered on the floor, people who seem familiar and those who do not. 

Oswald sees the same, sees the stalemate with no end in sight.  He turns to Kathryn.  “You’re a remarkable woman,” he tells her.  “You’ve seen a lot like this, haven’t you?”  He takes a step forward, gun lowered to his side.  “Have you ever struck a bargain with someone like me?”

Kathryn tilts her head.  “In your defense, I have met few people quite like you,” she says.

“I’ll agree not to run for re-election,” Oswald says.  “I’ll finish out my term—relax, it’s two years—and after that I quietly retire from the public eye and, what was it you said?  Stick to what I know best?  I’ll be a good boy and make sure my public office falls within your guidelines, if you stop interfering.”

“And what,” Kathryn asks, “could convince me that you’ll honor the agreement?”

“When I announce it next week,” Oswald tells her.  “On the fourth.  A public speech stating I won’t run for re-election I’ll broadcast in the afternoon.  I keep my word.  Will you keep yours?”

“Two years in office is still longer than we’d like,” Kathryn tells him.

“Call it recompense for my father’s doppelganger.” 

Kathryn considers him, looks him over before holding out her hand.  “We will keep our eye on you.  Remember this, Mr. Cobblepot: no matter how powerful you think you are, there things outside your realm of understanding.  And there are people you cannot control.  Honor our agreement and we’ll remain perfectly civil.  Break our arrangement and you will find yourself, and your chief of staff, in a far worse place than Arkham.”

Oswald shakes her hand, and then, in a moment that surprises Ed, lifts her hand and carefully presses it to his lips.  “Took the words right out of my mouth, Ms. Genovese,” he tells her.  “Until next time?”

“There won’t be one, if you keep to your promise,” Kathryn tells him.

“Well then.  Shall we call it a night?”

Kathryn waves her hand to show them out.

For a few minutes everything seems civil; their guards flank them on all sides as they leave the building.

Ed’s kept quiet long enough, he thinks.  The conversation behind them wasn’t meant for him, he knows, but he needs to speak.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks.  “After everything you worked so hard to achieve, you’re just going to let her take that from you?”

Oswald turns to him.  “This is Gotham.  Nothing’s permanent here but crime.  I never thought after winning office I’d stay there forever.  In any case,” he looks ahead.  “We can get a lot done in two years.”

“And after that?” Ed asks.

Oswald raises his eyebrows.  “What kind of question is that?” he asks. 

Fair, Ed supposes, and as they get into the limo parked out front and watch their hired hands disperse, one getting into the limo as a guard with them, others heading home, he figures just having Ed on board might cost him a reelection. 

 

Nothing seems amiss at first on the drive home, at least until the driver makes a wrong turn and heads in the opposite direction.

“Are we not headed home?” Ed asks.  He was unaware there were any other stops for the evening.

Oswald knocks on the barrier separating them.  “We’re headed the wrong way,” he says.  “Take us to the Van Dahl manor.”

There’s no response.  Instead the car speeds up, heads for the docks.

“What’s going on?” Oswald demands, and pounds on the door with no response.

Then everything shifts.  He glances over at the guard, who seems equally clueless, then at Ed.  Kathryn might have gotten what she wanted, but she’s not the only one who has it out for

“Think you can jump out of a moving car?” he asks.

Ed thinks about the impact, about the speed the car’s going, about how ill-equipped he is to deal with physical ramifications Oswald faces constantly.  “With the car going this fast?” he asks.

“Best chance of survival,” Oswald tells him, and when he puts it like that, it sounds much better.

Problem is, the doors immediately lock up, and Oswald looks back at Ed, eyes wide.  “If I shoot this out-” he raps his fist on the barrier “-we won’t be able to get ahold of the wheel in time for it not to crash.  We wait until the car stops, we face an unknown threat.”

Doors locked, no chance of escape except knocking out what must be bulletproof windows, an unknown enemy up ahead, three pairs of guns, and only one person to serve as backup.

All Ed can think to say is, “I have an extra magazine.”

Oswald looks at him, and his face softens for just a moment.  It’s a look Ed imagines might be pride.  “So do I.  Kevin?” he turns to the guard, who nods at the unspoken question.

_Do we fight like hell?_

What other choice do they have?

That car parks finally in front of the docks; there are people waiting their guns at the ready just as the car’s occupants are loaded and strapped.

The moment they hear the doors unlock they’re out; Ed’s terrified.  He’s never anticipated being part of a shootout, not really.  Always thought that should he reach a point in which he could take lives without repercussion, he’d delegate the job to others, but here he is, facing several people in black with their faces obscured.

He’s killed before and he’ll do it again, but he’s never _shot_ anyone.  It’s an entirely new feeling as he manages to keep his hands steady and aim for someone’s throat, feel the kickback and how it jams his wrists, how the blood spurts and the body falls.  The cacophony surrounds him, makes him think of that night months ago that nearly ended his life.

He spares a glance at Oswald, who’s still alive, thank God, and firing with far better accuracy than he is.

“Give it up!”

He hears her voice over the gunshots, over his own terror, because it’s one that will never leave him in peace.

“ _You._ ”

He finally sees her and a car behind her as she strides towards them with a gun in each hand.

“You’re a lunatic,” he tells her.

Isabella hardly spares Ed’s guard a glance as she shoots him dead between the eyes; her gaze shifts between Ed and Oswald.  “Well, that does mean a lot coming from you,” she says as she points her guns home.

“What revenge are you out for?” Ed demands.  “You _tortured_ me, you _shot_ me—crimes for which you were found innocent, I might add—and you’ve joined an organization not even Oswald and I could dismantle.  What more is there for you?”

Isabella tilts her head.  “You just don’t get it, do you?” she asks.

No one’s shooting yet, not even Isabella’s thugs, not even as they draw in closer.

Ed glances at Oswald, who has his gun pointed squarely at Isabella, and has a vicious, determined look Ed would find appealing in a different situation as he stands, hair mussed and jaw tight.  Ed doesn’t know how he manages to stay so steady.

“I came to Gotham to make you suffer.  When I lost her, I lost my _twin_ ; I lost half of myself.  I lost the person who mattered more to me than anyone else—more than my parents, more than my husband—and you’ll never understand how much it hurt.

“Except now,” she starts to smile, manic, furious as her green eyes narrow on Oswald’s frame.  “Now, I think that just maybe you’ll get a taste of what it was like.”

Ed realizes it, gets it far too late.  And fight or flight instinct means nothing, because he freezes just a second too long to shoot.  All he processes are two gunshots, a haze of pure red as he bolts forward too late.

He hears a scream, hears a voice bellowing Oswald’s name.  It’s _his_ voice, he dimly realizes.  Odd.  Nothing seems to follow a coherent pattern; time means nothing.  Ed doesn’t know if or how he moves towards the small frame that crumples against one of Isabella’s thugs, who then lets him fall against the gravel like a broken doll.

Could be a crash test dummy, for all the signs of life Oswald gives off, for all that he responds to Ed’s scream. 

He wasn’t sure, for all his anger towards her, that he could ever hurt her, could ever repay the pain she inflicted on him. 

He also never thought he’d experience this level of rage.

Tears prick at his eyes, blur his vision but not enough, nowhere near enough, for him to miss as he shoots Isabella in the stomach.

She cries out and stumbles back, drops one of her guns to clutch her stomach, but doesn’t fall, doesn’t give up.  She points the gun again Oswald’s head; Ed doesn’t see blood yet.  Why doesn’t he see blood?

The same figure that grabbed Oswald, the same thug, reaches Isabella first and grips her hand the moment she fires.

It doesn’t—Ed can’t _see_ where the bullet made impact, but it must have.  He hears it somehow even as his own scream drowns out everything but the thundering in his ears. 

He shoots Isabella again, this time tries with a shaking grip to make it to her heart.  It almost hits home, close enough that she won’t survive another goddamn minute.

He’ll bury his magazine in her fucking head.

But Isabella drops.  She relinquishes her hold on her remaining gun as the figure grips her hand and softens her fall.

“ _Stop_ ,” the masked person says—it’s a woman’s voice, but not one he recognizes.

“Funny,” Ed tells her, and aims again.

“He isn’t dead, dumbass.”  The woman nudges Oswald’s prone figure with her boot. 

And, oh God, _oh God_.  Ed sees him stir, however weak, however slight.  He hears himself sob as he scrambles over to him, sees where the bullet caught him.

It grazed the orbital cavity of Oswald’s left eye; there’s blood, there’s stone from where the bullet’s debris scattered against the gravel, and there’s Ed’s panic as he checks Oswald’s breathing, his pulse. 

“He’s not ready to go,” the woman says from above them.  “He’s like a cockroach; after the world ends he’ll still be here.  If anyone could survive a nuclear war, it’s him.”

Ed cradles Oswald’s head in his hands, tries to brush away what debris he can.  Oswald needs a hospital; he’s not dead but he could easily go blind in one eye, could get infected.  He glances up at their savior, the short woman who still seems content to confuse him.  Ed glances around him; everyone but them are down for the count, but they couldn’t all have been shot.  What the hell is going on?  “Who _are_ you?”

The woman pulls off her ski mask, and it takes a moment.  He’s never met this woman, never seen her in the flesh, but he recognizes her somehow.  From the news, perhaps?  One couldn’t forget a face like hers, or the mismatched pale blue eye that dominates it.

He’s never met her, but Oswald has.

“ _Fish Mooney_.”

“Full points, darling.  I’d suggest you get out of here immediately.  Tell Oswald this one is on the house, so long as he doesn’t mind me staying where I belong.”

Ed glances around, at the bodies that have dropped, some bleeding and some not. 

Isabella is not. 

“How…?” he asks as he notices her breathing.  She’s just unconscious.

“She was smart enough to wear bulletproof armor under her formalwear.  You need to leave.  I’ll take her, you take him.  The limo still has its keys in the car, so have at it.”

“You think I’m going to let her live?” Ed asks, incredulous.  “After all this?”

Fish kneels down beside him.  “You’ll let her live, or I’ll have to persuade you,” she tells him.  “She needed this.  And let’s face it, so did you.”  She glances at Oswald, and back at Ed.  “You got a taste of what it was like to lose someone you loved, just like she wanted.  But you have it better; the person you love is still alive.

“In fact, Oswald doesn’t owe me for this.  Nothing to pay back, but you do.  I save your man, you let me take _her_ someplace safe,” she nods at Isabella’s prone form.

Oswald needs help; Oswald needs a doctor. 

It seems as though he’s trying to open his eyes; the lashes flutter but he can’t manage it.

“Fine.  Just go.”

 _I’d rather have you alive than her dead_.

He doesn’t pay attention to Fish after that, nor does he bother to help as she lugs Isabella, who outweighs her by an easy twenty pounds, to her car.  He hears it start, hears it drive off, but figures he doesn’t care enough about them at the moment to consider following them.

“Oswald?”

At long last Oswald wakes, even as he can’t meet Ed’s gaze, even as he’s weak, even as he’s hurt.

“ _Yeah_?”

Ed laughs; drying tears spill again as the laughter bubbles in his throat; he kisses Oswald’s cheeks and nose, kisses his forehead and the space around his newest injury.

Oswald winces at the contact but laughs with him all the same.  “We need to get the hell out of here,” he says finally.

“Yeah, we do.”

………………………………..

“We should get you to a hospital.”

“Absolutely not,” Oswald replies.  He’s slouching back against the car seat, clean cloth over his eye.  In a different scenario Ed might find it funny they’re driving a limo with no one sitting in the back.  “People will know I was involved in a shootout.  That can’t happen.”

“But you need medical attention,” Ed tells him.  “That’s an orbital fracture.  It will at the very least make the vision worse in that eye, even if it doesn’t get infected or require surgery.”

Oswald smiles at him.  “I have medical supplies in the manor, and we could always pilfer a few leftover from the Sirens and Tabitha’s honeymoon period.  In any case, you looked after me before.”

Ed huffs.  “And I’ll gladly do it again, but what if you need care more advanced than I can provide?”

Oswald sighs.  “If my vision gets that much worse I’ll start wearing a monocle.  How’s that sound?”

Ed glances from the road and at Oswald’s lopsided, pained smirk before he starts laughing.  Oswald joins him, and together they head home, miraculously alive, ready to fight another day.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also yes, I am hinting at Query and Echo's future involvement with Nygma starting with Babitha's sense of fair play.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final bit for this segment of their story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a bit done with Gotham at the moment, to be honest, but there are things I wish I could have included that I may add as vignettes, if others are interested.
> 
> Quick warning: this chapter does contain smut. I debated whether or not to include it, given that I do see Oswald as on the asexual spectrum, specifically as demisexual, and didn't want to imply that he needs a relationship to be sexual to be legitimate, or that being in a relationship "cures" him of his asexuality, I thought I'd add this chapter as an epilogue, but also, for the latter part, the scenario I would prefer for Ed and Oswald's first time if they were to have a sexual relationship.

Oswald keeps his word.  Ed wrote him a speech that reeks of grace and remorse Oswald doesn’t have, but in giving it manages to raise his popularity even as he concedes his time in office; the Court keeps their word.  No articles come out about the mayor’s violent criminal acts, about the unprofessional relationship between him and his chief of staff.  No further word as they slip into the shadows.  They don’t need to give one.  He knows the moment he even appears to put a toe out of line they’ll come after him.  Isabella doesn’t make a sound either on behalf of the Court or herself; he doesn’t know if the Court still wants her after an outburst he’s sure they didn’t want or plan, but he has the scarring around his eye to remind him of that night.  His eyesight in his left eye has indeed gotten worse, but not enough that he’s willing to concede to a monocle yet.

Empires topple.  He’ll keep as much of one as he can as he grows the other.

A week becomes a month becomes two becomes longer still since the shit-show with the Court, since he made his promise, and he can feel his time ticking down—in under two years he’ll step down from this office and any other legal position of authority for good.  That being the case, he has a lot of work to do if he wants to sink his claws into every facet of Gotham he stands to lose once he resigns as mayor.

Ed hires two guards/backup/muscle that remind Oswald of more pragmatically-dressed versions of Zsasz’s henchgirls.  Both are bartenders at the newly opened _Pandora’s Box_ , both are in the LGBT community (pansexual and lesbian respectively) and in the BDSM scene, and both could easily beat Ed up with roughly the same effort required to uproot a dandelion.  He’ll need them all the more when none of his dealings involve law-abiding citizens with respect for human life.  He has his own life, his own goals for himself outside Oswald, and has since the start--Oswald could never take that from him.  He could never make Ed compromise his cunning and intellect strictly for his own benefit.

Ed’s never going to be the man who does all his own dirty work, and he doesn’t need to be.  It’s Ed’s beautiful, brilliant, often unnerving brain that makes him powerful.  It’s what made Oswald fall for him.

He buys and opens a new club, _The Iceberg_ , with his own--well-- _inherited_ money.  He loans out a few guards to Barbara and Tabitha as they've done for him, and a few at Blackgate  when Tabitha, tired of living in hiding, turns herself in for a lighter sentence.

"I hate that woman," he tells Barbara when he helps her orchestrate Tabitha's release two months in of her six-month sentence.

"We know.  And thanks," Barbara replies.  "She hates you and Ed too, by the way.  She's also grateful as hell, so there's that.  And," Barbara sighs after a moment, "so am I.  You have an ally for life, now."

..................................................

"Long live the king," is the first thing Ed tells him during the opening of _The Iceberg_ , standing beside Oswald's seat and leaning down to press a kiss into his feathered hair.  The guests are gone, and it's just them left, able to interact they way they'd like.

Oswald chuckles.  After a moment, he says, "What is it that no one has yet seen, which never was, but always will be?"

Ed pulls back suddenly, and Oswald grins up at Ed's surprised expression, one that melts into a delighted smile as he asks, "Are you asking me a riddle?"

Oswald feels his own grin may split open his face.  "Do you like riddles?" he replies.  

Ed laughs, stunned.  "Tomorrow," he says finally.  " _Tomorrow_."

Oswald takes Ed's hand, twines their digits.  "When we're done with politics, we'll still be here ruling Gotham.  Nothing ever goes right or stays permanent, but I know that much.  You and me, the Penguin and the Riddle-Man."

Ed winces, and Oswald reaches towards him with his free hand.  "Did I say something wrong?"

Ed shakes his head.  "The first man I ever killed used to call me that.  If I am to ever have a moniker, I don't want it to be from those circumstances."

"Yes, of course."  Oswald reaches up to Ed from where he sits on his appointed throne, pulls Ed down to him, cups Ed's cheek.  "Of course."  He hated his own nickname before he wore it like a badge.  He murmurs titles against Ed's mouth between brief kisses to his cheeks and lips, imagining the city fearing and respecting the man he loves like well they should.  "Mr. Enigma.  The Puzzler.  My handsome, brilliant Riddler."

Ed kisses back, gripping the back of Oswald's head and setting his other hand down on Oswald's armrest for balance.  "I like that last one," he replies, whispers against Oswald's lips.

" _Riddler_."  Oswald likes it too.  He likes how it rolls off the tongue, the note of mischief to play off Ed's often impish sense of humor.  If any name is to become synonymous with this man, there are few that sound better.  The people of Gotham will all learn it quickly enough.

_Tomorrow._

…………………………………………

While Oswald has never really craved sex, and, for the most part, still doesn’t crave the act itself, he finds himself becoming curious.  He’s grown to love Ed’s mouth on his, the lingering kisses at his collar, the fingertips brushing his skin, the feel of a body that’s somehow familiar, somehow calming, holding his own.  He likes the idea of sleeping with Ed not because he wants the mechanics of it, but because he sees it as a bonding experience—another layer of intimacy to try.

He knows Ed wants to, in his own words, _fuck him_ , knows times they’ve kissed privately, fervently, making out like a couple of randy teenagers, left Ed hotter under the collar than Oswald was prepared for, left Ed shuffling, red-faced and visibly erect, to the nearest bathroom on a couple of embarrassing occasions.  So far, though, Ed hasn’t brought up the possibility of sex or tried to convince Oswald to do anything with him beyond what they’ve done, which is to say not much. 

Oswald wondered for a while if Ed simply lost interest, got to know Oswald as a romantic partner and decided Oswald couldn’t actually arouse him, but he’s figured out by now Ed just doesn’t feel comfortable instigating it.  He won’t bring it up first, because he needs to know Oswald truly wants it.

And as he mulls it over, he realizes he does.  He does want to know how it feels, skin on skin, Ed losing himself inside of him, the idea of physically consummating their relationship.  They don’t _need_ it, but it is an aspect of their relationship that certainly won’t hurt.  Oswald knows, as extraordinary and incredulous as it is, that if he needs Ed to stop, if he can’t go through with it, Ed will back off.         

……………………………………………..

There’s a gala this evening, perhaps the last of its kind they’ll attend. Oswald asked the bar manager of _The Iceberg_ to be his plus-one: her name is Jessica and she’s short, strikingly attractive, and openly lesbian (a fact both will cheerfully remind reporters that evening during questions of “their relationship.”)  Ed takes his intern, Molly, whose enthusiasm deflates when she realizes the gesture was platonic, but she perks up again when she sees the gown he purchased for her.  It took both Oswald mentioning it and Molly stammering an invitation to go for drinks after work two weeks ago for Ed to figure out she has a bit of a crush on him, and he imagines it works in her favor that she’s too awkward for Oswald to find her interest anything but vaguely cute.  The prospect of taking her feels like he’s celebrating prom over a decade too late and after going to the movies (Ingmar Bergman Night at the classic movie theater in the town center) the one time he could go, but he refrains from buying her a corsage as well.

Right now, though, neither Ed nor Oswald are thinking about formalities or much of anything at all; what started out as a brainstorming session on dealing with some of the smaller gangs that seem to pop up like weeds and join to grow in greater profusion has devolved into making out in Ed’s office.  It wasn’t intentional, really it wasn’t, and Oswald usually redirects them back to business if he thinks Ed is being too affectionate, but now he’s pulling Ed down to him as he leans up to reach as much of him as he can.

Ed ends up pushing Oswald back against the wall and gripping the back of Oswald’s head as he kisses him with a ferocity he’s rarely shown.  He wants to be inside of him, aches to fuck him, but will settle for kissing him so hard Oswald whimpers and arches into him; gives up control entirely and clings to Ed as Ed takes charge.

Ed doesn’t notice at first Oswald’s hand shifting from Ed’s shoulder down his stomach; doesn’t realize until slender fingers are cupping the front of his slacks.  It surprises him; hell, Ed surprises himself with how loudly he groans as he bucks his hips into Oswald’s hand before coming to his senses and breaking away.

They’re both panting; Oswald’s eyes glint near silver and even as after a cursory glance he doesn’t appear erect, his face shows real _want_.

“Tonight,” Oswald tells him.  “Do you still want to fuck me?”

Even as Ed can hardly believe his luck, he must ask: “Is that what you want, too?” 

Oswald meets his gaze head on.  “I want to try it,” he says.  No trembling in his voice, no hesitation.

Ed has to take several deep breaths.  Oswald had said from the start that sex was an eventual possibility, but certainly not a guarantee.  Now, after almost a year on top of over _another_ year of frustration, Oswald actually wants this? 

He smiles before bending down to kiss Oswald one final time.  “My room, eleven?”

Oswald shakes his head.  “Your room, as soon as we manage to get the hell out of that party tonight.”

…………………………..

Ed considers the possibilities and positions best for tonight; he’s never had anal sex, and he imagines it would be easiest for him to prep Oswald if Oswald was on all fours; then again, the positions easiest on Oswald’s leg, whether he's penetrating Oswald, or taking Oswald inside of him, or without penetration at all, would probably involve Oswald being on his back.  Should he go down on him first?  He’s never gone down on anyone, male or female, but he learns quickly enough, and he likes the idea of it, likes the idea of discovering bringing someone to trembling completion with his mouth nearly as much as he enjoys the sensation of being inside someone.  He knows anatomy, he’s slept with someone before (someone with a different _sort_ of anatomy, but still) and he’s gotten his hands on some admittedly dated porn in his day, so he’s not completely in the dark.  All the same, he needs to make sure everything is perfect.  

……………………………

Oswald lets others chalk up his apparent nervousness to too much caffeine, and Ed’s to his naturally high-energy personality, and they are absolutely fine with it even as they count down the minutes, the formalities, until they and their dates can leave. 

An additional plus side, Ed’s intern/assistant, who Oswald inwardly calls “Molly with the crush on my secret boyfriend” seemed to forget all about Ed once she met Jessica, who utterly charms her the entire evening, to the point that Molly almost leaves after her when Jessica kisses her hand and slips her a number goodnight.

A good night overall, and Oswald's resolve doesn't change when they cross the threshold and walk together, Ed's hand in his, towards Ed's room.  He's nervous, sure.  But he's had months to decide if he wants this or not, and his opinion doesn't change after he first realized he does.

They kick their shoes off first the moment they get past the barrier of Ed's bedroom door; Oswald might mourn how he discards his clothes so carelessly in another situation.

Oswald starts; he lets his suit jacket fall to the floor as he gets to work on the buttons of his vest; Ed takes over the job; kisses Oswald softly for every button he undoes, stands back when Oswald reaches forward to do the same for him.

Oswald tries to keep himself collected as he slides Ed’s vest to his sides, but first he cannot resist tugging Ed down to him by his necktie and taking Ed’s tongue into his mouth.  He’s learned how to unseat and excite Ed in this respect, at least.  And to think he’d never really even felt compelled to kiss anyone not too long ago.

He likes Ed’s body; the lean, firm lines of him.  Oswald hasn’t seen him shirtless entirely before, and his breath catches as Ed pulls off his undershirt to show the expanse of warm, perfect skin marred with that too-familiar bullet wound in his gut.  Oswald thinks it looks better on Ed than his own old scars.  As he trails his fingertips over the flat planes of Ed’s stomach, he grazes over the scar and thinks about how easily he could’ve lost him.  How easily he could be alone tonight.

Ed doesn’t let him dwell on this; he distracts Oswald with kisses to his lips, his cheeks, his nose, his jaw as he strips Oswald from the waist up and wraps his arms around him, holds him close and secure as he walks them to the bed, as he coaxes Oswald to lay back.  Oswald feels every kiss burn his skin as Ed brings his mouth to the column of Oswald’s throat, the crux of his neck where he nips and bites drags his tongue over the reddened flesh.  _Christ_ , Oswald didn’t expect his body to respond like this, didn’t expect to gasp at each contact and _squirm_.  He has a high pain tolerance; his leg always, _always_ hurts, a punch in the face was once routine for him, he’s had to reset his broken nose several times and knows how it feels to get physically ill from a beating more than how it feels to be hugged, and yet now he feels all too sensitive. 

“ _Ed_ …” he manages; he doesn’t know where the hell to go with this.  It’s almost too much for him, but he doesn’t want it to stop just yet.  Through the overstimulation when so little has happened yet, he needs more.

Ed freezes, his mouth against Oswald’s collarbone.  “You want me to stop?” he asks, begins to sit up, draw back.  Ed’s body is more defined than Oswald expected, and lean as a bear in winter.

“ _No_ ,” Oswald says, missing the contact even as the distance makes it easier for him to focus.  “Don’t stop,” he says, and _God_ , he means it. 

Ed sits up regardless; gently nudges Oswald’s legs farther apart and kneels between them, trails his hands along Oswald’s sides and grins slightly at the responding gasp.

 _Smug asshole_ , Oswald thinks before Ed unbuckles Oswald’s belt and unfastens his slacks, slides them and his underpants down together.

Oswald’s breath catches; he feels hot all over, feels as though he’s lost in a dream as Ed tosses Oswald’s remaining clothes to the side of the bed and leans over him.  Oswald’s all pasty, marred skin and bony limbs and barely half-hard dick and still Ed watches, lips parted and eyes half-lidded, as he catalogues Oswald’s naked body.

He leans down and presses his crotch, the tent in his slacks that makes Oswald gasp, against him; he takes ahold of Oswald’s good leg and nudges it to the side so he can more easily fit himself in the narrow cradle of Oswald’s hips.  He caresses Oswald’s injured leg.  The skin prickles up at the attention, as if aware of how much time Oswald has spent ignoring it.

Ed grinds down again, one hand on Oswald’s hip, the other braced on the pillow.

“ _You’re so beautiful_ ,” he murmurs, lips brushing against the shell of Oswald’s ear, and Oswald nearly sobs.  He’s never realized how much he wants to be wanted.  He’s never realized that he could find such gratification, never thought anyone could see him dressed down and exposed and like what they saw.

……………………………

Oswald has a faint dusting of freckles on the tops of his shoulders; Ed wonders how they’ve remained, when Oswald never bares more than his face and hands; he looks at the old bullet wounds, the scars he hasn’t asked about; one at his side that looks like it came from a switchblade; an appendectomy scar; he trails his fingertips along the raised flesh.

“It burst when I was seventeen,” Oswald tells him.  “Me and my mom were both working at the time, but the cost of the hospital bill nearly got us evicted.”

“And this one?” Ed brushes his fingertips against his side.

“I was twenty-five,” Oswald tells him.  “It was stupid; I swindled a guy in a trade.  Turned out it’d been a test to see if I could handle working for Fish.”

Ed considers this before dipping his head and pressing his lips to each mark.  He hears Oswald’s breath catch, hears him pant as Ed descends to Oswald’s semi-erection and wraps a hand around his base.  He’s never done this before, and in all honesty he has no intention of dwelling too long on it for now, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he whorls his tongue around the tip, smiles around the sensitive skin as he hears Oswald give a sharp, “ _Ah_!”  He catalogues the response for a later time when he can more fully experiment in this manner and not the task at hand.

He pulls back; he was standing the first time he took his pants off in front of a prospective partner, and it’s less graceful, decidedly less seductive to pull both his slacks and boxers down to his knees and attempt to shimmy out of them entirely as he kneels on the bed and tosses them to the floor beside, but fuck it; he’s too anxious, especially as he sees Oswald’s eyes widen and lips part as he takes in the sight of Ed kneeling before him.  He’s fully nude, fully hard, and feels like his heart pounding in his ribcage, his lower stomach, in his cock, as he descends on Oswald again. 

His cock rubs against Oswald’s as he slides their bodies together; the feel of skin on skin; he’s sure he could get off just from this.  He won’t, but as long as Oswald wants it he imagines he’ll never get tired of Oswald’s body. 

Oswald gasps under him and grips the back of Ed’s head to pull him into a kiss.  He arches and responds to every slight gesture as if it gives him life.  Ed’s human enough to admit he likes Oswald’s hypersensitivity.  He also doesn’t know how long he’ll last if Oswald keeps making such pretty sounds.

“How’re you doing?” he murmurs against Oswald’s mouth.

“Good, good,” Oswald assures him.

“Want me to keep going?” Ed asks, and grins as Oswald nods with a sharp exhale.

The nightstand beside them has all they need, and Ed figures it’s better if they change positions for now.  He pulls a pillow from beside Oswald’s head and sets it to his right.

“I’m going to need you to turn over for me,” he says. 

Oswald rises, turns as gracefully as he can manage, and Ed helps him, sets the pillow under Oswald’s right knee and trails his hands along Oswald’s hips and flanks as Oswald gets situated.

Oswald has a few freckles and a small mole on his back; Ed kisses them before turning to the nightstand and pulling out a condom and bottle of lube.

As he kneels behind Oswald, he says, “Tell me if you need me to stop, or if you need me to do anything different.”  He gently nudges Oswald’s left leg further apart and as he settles back, takes everything into consideration.

At some point he’d like to experiment with rimming Oswald out, but he figures that’s something they should discuss in advance.  Instead he brings his left hand between Oswald’s legs and gently cups his sac, rubs his thumb along Oswald’s perineum and gently pats Oswald on the flank when Oswald gasps and whimpers.  So _sensitive_ , so _vocal_.  Ed loves it, and pours what could be too much lube onto his fingers.

“I’m going to start prepping you now,” Ed tells him, leans over Oswald’s small frame and kisses the space between his shoulder blades before pulling back and gently circling the outer edges of Oswald’s entrance with his index finger; with his left hand he stimulates Oswald’s gradually stiffening penis, his testes, with fascination.  Ed is no virgin, but this is his first time exploring someone with the same anatomical features as his own, and his satisfaction is both visceral and scientific.  He nudges his index finger in slowly, pulls it back for every inch he gets in.  It’s tight and hot and he retires his left hand from slowly working Oswald’s shaft to steady himself on his hip.

“Does this hurt?” he asks.  Might be useless to ask a man who’s been badly injured many times; a finger in his ass is nothing compared to getting his leg broken, and Ed hadn't found the experience painful in the past when experimenting on himself, but he wants to make sure.

“No,” Oswald tells him, “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

“Have you tried this with yourself before this?”

Oswald shakes his head.  Ed’s not surprised; Oswald, especially early on in whatever relationship they have now, has given the impression of a man uncomfortable with his own body, both in looking at it, allowing it to be touched, or exploring it himself.  What they’re doing now is mostly for Ed’s benefit, and he’s incredibly grateful.

He works his index finger in and out slowly, until the muscle starts to relax and feel more elastic.

“You’re doing beautifully.  I’m adding another.”

Oswald gasps as Ed curls his index and middle fingers toward Oswald’s stomach.  Ed figures it would be the best angle to stimulate Oswald’s prostate, and as he reaches the tiny bundle of nerves, hears Oswald give a soft moan.  Ed smirks to himself as he works his fingers at the same angle and ignores the stiffness in his fingers in favor of hearing Oswald pant and dip his head low between his shoulder blades.

“Good?” he asks. 

For once Oswald doesn’t seem annoyed at the smug tone in Ed’s voice.  “ _Yes_ ,” he responds.

“Fantastic.  I’m going to add a third finger soon.”

Ed takes a break, pulls his fingers out and sits back; he needs a moment to gather himself, to let Oswald get used to this level of intimacy.

He leans forward again to once more drape himself over Oswald.  He kisses his back, the nape of his neck, tugs at the longer strands of Oswald’s feathered hair to bring his face closer.

Oswald’s cheeks are flushed pink and his pupils dilated and his mouth open as Ed kisses him slowly, like an unfolding promise.

“How’s your leg?” Ed asks in between kisses.

“It’s fine for now,” Oswald tells him.  “Will be fine for another few minutes, but,” he kisses Ed back, curls his back into the contact of Ed’s body leaning over his own, “I want to be able to look at you for the main event.”

Ed smiles, brushes his nose over Oswald’s cheek before returning to the activity at hand.  He needs to make sure Oswald is as prepared for this as possible, and the methodical exploration on Ed’s part, as much as it excites him, paradoxically calms his urge to simply grab Oswald’s hips tight and drill into him right now. 

Three fingers and Oswald gives a more pinched moan and clenches around the digits.  Ed immediately stops.

“Everything okay?”

“Keep going,” Oswald tells him.

“That doesn’t answer my question.  _Are you okay_?”

“ _Yes_.  Jesus fucking Christ, I’m fine.  It barely stung.  Just,” he shifts under Ed, glances behind him as best he can manage.  “Don’t stop, alright?”

Ed nods.  “Alright.”  The last minute is arduous, tortuous; Oswald arches like a cat and _keens_ the last few thrusts Ed gives with his fingers.  Ed hopes he’s prepped enough, because just these reactions might do him in; he’s already breathing hard.  He’s almost surprised cartoon steam hasn’t fogged up the inside of his glasses.

“Ready?” he asks _.  Please God say yes_.

“Yeah.”  Oswald’s voice is little more than a breath.  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Ed withdraws his fingers entirely.  He gently grips Oswald’s sides and turns him onto his back; Oswald’s now fully erect and he’s flushed from his face to his groin. Ed takes the pillow from Oswald’s leg.

“Lift your hips for me,” Ed tells him.  In the end he helps anyway, feeling the bone in the palm of his hand as he slides the pillow under him.

Ed uses the leftover lube on his fingers to slick his neglected cock; he meets Oswald’s wide eyes as he slowly jerks himself.  He’d always seen the act as a private, embarrassing activity, but he does find something exciting about Oswald seeing him handle himself like this.  Oswald’s lips part as he watches, and Ed wonders if Oswald would be willing to take him between them at some point, if he’d prefer to take it sitting or lying down rather than kneeling, slim fingers digging into Ed’s hips and eyes like ice peering up at him.

_You’ll come way too quickly if you keep taking that train of thought._

The condom’s lubricated, but Ed figures that after rolling it on (considering it’s only the third time in his life that he’s done this and he’s so turned on he could swear he’s drunk off his own lust, he thinks he does a pretty good job) a touch more couldn’t hurt.  He sets the lube, the wrapper, on the nightstand and gently grips Oswald’s bad leg.

“Does it hurt if I push this back?” Ed asks as he slowly bends Oswald’s knee.

Oswald shakes his head as he lays open and vulnerable beneath him.  “I just can’t really do it on my own,” he says.

Ed nods to himself and leans down, one hand braced beside Oswald’s shoulder and the other gently pushing Oswald’s injured leg back towards his chest.  He kisses the thigh, the inside of his knee.  The bones must never have been reset.  Oswald must have been forced to walk on what was likely a fractured kneecap and broken ankle and never got them treated.  He’ll never walk normally or without pain again.

As if Oswald can tell what he’s thinking, he wraps his good leg around Ed’s hips.  “Don’t worry so much,” he says, he trails his fingertips along Ed’s back.

 _I love you_ , Ed thinks.  He sits back and takes himself in hand, and brown eyes meet blue as he starts to push in.

For all the prepping, it’s still a slow process and there’s still resistance.  He gets the first inch in before he has to stop; Oswald arches and grunts, bites back what must be a whimper, eyes shut in discomfort, leg trembling under Ed’s grip and chest rising and falling like a rabbit’s.  Ed leans down and kisses him.  He rests his elbow on the pillow beside Oswald’s head and the moment he pushes in another inch has to bury his face in the crux of Oswald’s neck.

_Warm soft good mine all mine so perfect so beautiful_

He forces himself to repeat the periodic table of elements as he restrains himself from shoving in the rest of the way just yet, or worse, “blowing his load”, as they say, too early.  It’s entirely possible.  The two only occasions he’d had sex were good, were long-awaited, but this feels different.  There’s something about this moment that reverberates in his very bones, makes him nearly shake as he kisses Oswald’s collarbone, the column of his throat, tries to distract them both from the intensity.

_Helium_

_Oxygen_

_Fuck_.

He feels Oswald raise his good leg slightly higher.

“Hey,” he murmurs.  He grips Ed’s shoulders and rolls his hips slightly into him.  Every muscle in his body feels taut against Ed’s, and he can’t be entirely comfortable, but whether because he was prepped enough or because he’s just stubborn, he brings Ed’s face to his.  “You alright?”

“Are you?” Ed retorts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

A grin quirks, crooked, at the corner of Oswald’s mouth.  “I can handle it,” he says, and before Ed can protest, “I’m enjoying this.”  He brushes back a lock of hair that’s fallen from its slicked-back hold.  “Don’t worry.  I trust you.  And I don’t trust anyone.”

Ed watches Oswald’s face as he slowly pulls out to the tip and gently thrusts back in, farther than he’d been before, and then again, each time burying himself deeper inside of him.  Each time, the muscles in Oswald’s face tighten and his breath grows harsh, but still he encourages him, rocks against him, until Ed is inside of him to the hilt.

The first time Ed thrusts fully into him Oswald spasms against him, his breath constricted after he gives a harsh moan, and his short, blunt nails digging into Ed’s shoulder blades.

Ed rests his forehead against Oswald’s.  “Breathe,” he instructs him.  “Breathe for me.”

Oswald laughs softly.  He looks as though he’s trying his best to relax his body to the intrusion and he obeys.  As a reward Ed kisses him.  He rolls his hips in time with every lick against Oswald’s lips, the inside of his mouth.  Slow, deliberate, no more than Oswald’s body can handle.  The moment feels so startlingly intimate, the way Oswald adjusts and rocks to Ed’s movements, the way Oswald’s hands travel over Ed’s body, as if unsure where to settle.  They skim over his arms, skitter down his back and brush over his hips before, tentatively at first, cupping Ed’s ass as if to encourage him deeper.  Ed groans in surprise at the touch, and the sound rumbles in his chest and against Oswald’s mouth.  Oswald’s dick brushes between them; he doesn’t feel fully hard—not a surprise considering the discomfort of being fucked for the first time—but his erection hasn’t flagged entirely, and Ed’s hell-bent on making sure Oswald comes as well.  Sweat collects at his back, at his temples, and Oswald clings to him and holds him close as slick skin meets and the buildup in his belly and thundering in his ears drown out his own breath and his own small sounds that start in his chest as he exhales hard.

This isn’t the ideal angle for Ed to brush against the sensitive nerve endings, though, so after a final kiss he sits up, rocks back on his heels and pulls Oswald more fully onto his lap.  He’s new at this, but he imagines he’ll manage some accuracy.

Plus, well, he enjoys the view.  He likes how Oswald braces his arms behind him on the headboard and watches Ed with his pale eyes blown wide.

“Is this okay?” Ed asks, hands gripping Oswald’s hips, his thumbs caressing the indent of the bones.

Oswald nods.  “ _Yes_ ,” he adds, voice hoarse.

Ed’s never worked with this angle, so he shifts and adjusts and hopes Oswald doesn’t mind the changes before he finds something that works for them both.  Between the two of them, he _is_ more experienced, but that’s not saying much.

He regains some semblance of rhythm, and after a few thrusts Oswald arches back and gives a more guttural moan than any Ed’s heard from him before.

 _Right there_ , Ed thinks, and continues.  It might not be exact, but it appears to be effective.  He rocks his hips the direction he think will work best, caresses the skin Oswald was brave enough to bare to him, and hopes it’s enough.

 Perhaps it is.  Oswald pants and writhes, a force of nature brought down to Ed’s primal level and it looks like he’s enjoying this.  He gets that he’s doing this partly for Ed but, as long as he can get off and like what Ed’s doing…

Ed’s legs start to burn, but _Oswald_ spread before him open and enveloping him hot and tight distracts him; it’s enough that, when he becomes confident in the angle of his thrusts, he speeds up, hears himself grunt at the exertion.

 _You’re perfect_ , he thinks, as Oswald can’t touch him as freely from his position and settles for gripping one of Ed’s hands in his own.

He’s not going to last much longer, he thinks as Oswald spasms and clenches around him, arches and cries out.

“Ed…” Oswald murmurs, a near plea that makes Ed impossibly harder, give a particularly deep thrust—is it a plea for release?  Ed hopes so, because he doesn’t know if he’ll last much longer.  He does know he intends to bring Oswald to orgasm first.

It isn’t easy, holding Oswald to him with one hand while masturbating him with the other, but it’s worth it to see, to feel him try and buck his bony hips up into Ed’s fist, down onto Ed’s cock.

“I… _Ed_ …Oh…” Oswald throws his head back, clenches hard around Ed, seems to involuntarily clench his entire body.  “Oh, oh _God.”_ He comes, beautiful, uninhibited, around Ed, over Ed’s hand and onto his own stomach, a hoarse cry erupting from his chest, spilling from his lips.  He arches, taut as a bow, eyes shut against the intensity, and Ed savors the sight, files it away as an image to treasure.

_I wonder if he’ll let me take him in front of a mirror, make him see what I see when I tell him how lovely he is._

He wastes no time bending forward, craving the contact of Oswald’s chest to his, Oswald’s racing heartbeat and ragged breath matching his own.  Oswald fumbles to meet his lips in his post-orgasm haze, wraps his shaking arms around Ed’s shoulders.

The last few thrusts, Oswald’s legs drawn back nearly to his chest, hot skin and sweat mingling, Ed slides a sticky hand under Oswald’s back and cradles the smaller man to him, wanting to close all spaces between them when he comes.

It is earth-shattering, it is thunderous, it drowns out everything except the man in his arms, his harsh breaths, the meeting of their pulses as Ed’s heart pounds and loses all sense of anything else.  It can all go, can all burn, with nothing but the two of them left.

………………………………

 

Coming around Ed, into his hand, leaves him feeling weightless, leaves him feeling somehow cleansed.

And then Ed comes, shudders and moans against Oswald’s mouth before burying his face in Oswald’s collarbone.  Oswald gasps as he feels Ed clumsily mouth against the bare skin, feels him suckle at the crux of Oswald’s neck and nuzzle the mark he’ll undoubtedly leave.  Oswald himself isn’t ready to let go of him, even as he feels drained and spent.

Finally Ed’s mouth finds Oswald’s again, and he kisses him, caresses Oswald’s hip as he slowly pulls out and Oswald hisses.  It feels almost as foreign and uncomfortable as the first few moments of being penetrated, and he doesn’t realize how sore, how empty he feels without Ed inside of him.  It’s enough that he leans up as Ed starts to rise.

Ed notices—of course he notices, and he grins.  “I’ll be right back,” he says over his shoulder as he sits on the side of the bed to pull off the condom and leaves for his bathroom.  Oswald lays back, takes a moment to pull the pillow from under his hips and watch Ed’s long legs and pert ass and think, _I’ve really done it.  We really did this_.

He doesn’t have to wait long, thank God, and Oswald drinks in the sight of Ed, comfortable in his nudity and in Oswald’s opinion, with very good reason.  He likes how Ed’s hair has fallen from its gelled hold and fallen around his face to frame his cheekbones.  He likes the slight sheen of sweat on his skin and the way his softened cock hangs, rosy and uncut, between his legs.

“Everything alright?” Ed asks as he returns to bed with a washcloth in one hand before he sets his glasses on the nightstand table. 

And as he climbs into bed, crawls over Oswald and swipes the washcloth across his stomach, Oswald says, “Do you have any idea how handsome you are?”

Ed laughs and averts his gaze, focuses on cleaning them both entirely, slides his fingers along the water-slicked clean skin on Oswald’s lower stomach.  “I tend to see my body as just a meatsuit for my brain, but I’m glad you like it,” he says.

“Well, I do,” Oswald says, and when Ed is done with his ministrations takes the washcloth from his hands and drops it on the floor. Ed makes a disapproving noise but Oswald shrugs one shoulder before pulling Ed down to him, adjusting to feeling all of Ed against all of him and finding it is one more part of physical contact he’s growing to enjoy even as he’s tired and still-sensitive after his first orgasm from someone else.  He hooks his good leg around Ed’s hip as he kisses him again.  “Handsomest man in Gotham as well as the brightest,” he tells Ed.

Ed grins and kisses him back.  “Do you want to do this again sometime?” he asks.

He _would_.  He’s not sure he can handle it on as regular a basis as Ed would probably like, but he wants to keep this avenue open for them, even as it nearly overwhelmed him.  This can become a part of their life together— _fuck_.  They _have a life together_.

“Yes,” he says, cups Ed’s face in both his hands and musses the hair that falls into those dark, deep-set eyes.  “Definitely.  Just not tonight.  Too tired.”

Ed kisses Oswald’s palm, and then the other, in a gesture that makes Oswald chuckle, before rolling onto his back beside Oswald.  “Fair.  Sleep, then?”

Oswald looks over at Ed, catalogues his lanky, naked body, reminds himself that it won’t be the last time he ever sees him like this, and nods.  “Sounds like a plan.”

It takes some awkward fenagling to get the sheets and covers over them, but they manage, and Ed is kind enough to turn off the overhead light before he slips back under the sheets with him.  He’s also affectionate enough to turn to his side and curl up behind Oswald, wrapping an arm around him and sliding a leg between his own.

Oswald’s exhausted enough that he can contemplate the significance of everything in the morning, but in the meantime cares only about Ed’s heartbeat against his back, his arm pulling him in close and then the soft words Ed murmurs in his ear before drifting off, ones that might normally annoy Oswald, and certainly would have months ago.

“ _My lovely little bird_ …”

Does Oswald believe in fate?  Absolutely not.  He thinks he and Ed made this themselves, fought tooth and nail and survived things fate would dictate should have destroyed them.  They’re the ones who made this possible.  That said, as long as he has this, as long as he has this world he created and as long as he has Ed and what they made together, he’s not about to question it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that's it for this section of their lives. There are other avenues I'd like to explore--Ed's background and him finally talking about it with Oswald, or Babitha's little adventures as Barbara helps Tabitha recover, or the future of Query and Echo as I wish they would go, or Ed and Oswald, Barbara and Tabitha growing old together. Perhaps a look at the AU Isabella and her backstory and future involvement in Gotham  
> Also, yes, the sudden crotch grab during makeout sesh is inspired by Agron and Nasir's scene in Spartacus: Vengeance.


End file.
